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The 
Lure of the Desert Land 

and Other Poems 



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BY 

MADGE MORRIS 

(Mrs. Harr Wagner) 







SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.: 
HARR WAGNER PUBLISHING COMPANY 









29 1937 



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Dedicated to Harr Wagner 



Copyrighted, 191 z 
MADGE MORRIS WAGNER 



JAN 29 1917 



JOAQUIN MILLER'S TRIBUTE TO THE AUTHOR 

"And some Orient dawn had found me 
Kneeling at the house of fame." 

Fame found Madge Morris Wagner in the blazing 
Colorado desert, her fingers on the pulse of Nature. 
Or, at least, thither sent Lippincotts of Philadelphia to 
find her and persuade her to speak through them to 
the world. And this is what she said, like all who are 
truly great teachers, making a text of the place and 
the time: 

TO THE COLORADO DESERT 

Thou brown, bare-breasted, voiceless mystery, 

Hot sphinx of nature, cactus, crowned, what hast thou 

done? 
Unclothed and mute as when the groans of chaos 

turned 
Thy naked burning bosom to the sun. 
The mountain silences have speech, the rivers sing. 
Thou answerest never unto anything. 
Pink-throated lizards pant in thy slim shade; 
The horned toad runs rustling in the heat; 
The shadowy gray coyote, born afraid, 
Steals to some brackish spring and laps, and prowls 
Away; and howls, and howls and howls and howls, 
Until the solitude is shaken with an added loneliness. 
Thy sharp mescal shoots up a giant stalk, 
Its century of yearning, to the sunburnt skies, 
And drips rare honey from the lips 
Of yellow waxen flowers, and dies. 

Some lengthwise sun-dried shapes with feet and hands 
And thirsty mouths pressed on the sweltering sands, 
Mark here and there a gruesome graveless spot 
Where some one drank thy scorching hotness, and is 

not. 
God must have made thee in his anger, and forgot. 

Not since I can remember have I heard a voice so 
true as this. It is like the sublime and solemn bass 
of St. John. It is even John the Baptist crying in the 
wilderness. 

Indeed, I doubt if you will find anything more ter- 
ribly truthful and fearfully sublime this side of Job 
than this one lone, lorn cry from the desert. A photo- 



graph, even were such a thing possible, could not be 
more ghastly and ghastly exact. It is true poetry, and 
therefore more really true than the ordinary forms of 
truth. For truth can only be told entirely by figures 
of speech — poetry. There are not words enough in all 
the languages of this world to tell even the simplest 
truth exactly, even if there were time enough in the 
world. We must depend upon figures of speech, as 
did the seers of the Orient, for the exact truth. But 
the figures must be true, stately, majestic, impressive. 
This is poetry; and true poetry is in this sense not 
only the highest form of truth, but it is the only real 
truth that is uttered. When the world comes to com- 
prehend poetry it will have a great deal more truth, 
less quibbling about words, legal technicalities, legal 
lies. 

Turn back and read this poem on the Colorado 
Desert again, please. You can read it with profit and 
a certain sort of solemn pleasure a dozen times. There 
are lines here that are texts, sermons. 

"God must have made thee in his anger and 
forgot." 

Madge Morris Wagner has been all her life with us 
out here on the great seabank I believe; I know her 
father, Morris Hilyard, was a Virginian. Maybe, she, 
too, was a Virginian. I neither know nor care. We 
fill our books up with the dates and places of birth, 
things that amount to nothing, and leave little room 
for deeds or utterances. 

What will we do when we come to have 24,000 years 
of history and biography behind us? Why, we will 
say as the Chinese say, "this poet lived in a certain 
dynasty and said so and so." That is all. 

So I shall proceed to say what this strange, strong 
woman of the desert has said from out her heart of 
hearts. For she is a woman, a very human, tender 
woman. And you will concede before you have done 
reading the little bits of her sweet soul which I am 
permitted to give you that it is great impertinence in 
me to say much when she is singing. And I want you 
to know that these next lines of hers are as exactly 
true in all respects as her lines on the Colorado desert. 
Her only little baby had gone away from her out from 
the one narrow room to beyond the darkness; but in 



the next narrow room, a stronger woman nursed and 
rocked and cradled her stronger child, and kept rocking 
on her heart. And so there and then, out of the agony 
and desolation, she sang, as she sang only the other 
day from the desert. 

I hear her rocking the baby — 
Her room is just next to mine — 
And I fancy I feel the dimpled arms 
That round her neck entwine, 
As she rocks, and rocks the baby, 
In the room just next to mine. 

I hear her rocking the baby 

Each day when the twilight comes, 

P h! I know there's a world of blessing and love 

In the "baby-bye" she hums. 

I can see the restless fingers 

Playing with "mamma's rings." 

And the sweet little smiling, pouting mouth, 

That to hers in kissing clings, 

As she rocks and sings to the baby, 

And dreams as she rocks and sings. 

I hear her rocking the baby, 

Slower and slower now, 

And I know she is leaving her good-night kiss 

On its eyes, and cheeks and brow. 

From her rocking, rocking, rocking! 

I wonder would she start, 

Could she know, through the wall between us 

She is rocking on my heart. 

While my empty arms are aching 

For a form they may not press 

And my emptier heart is breaking 

In its desolate loneliness, 

I list to the rocking, rocking, 

In the room just next to mine, 

And breathe a prayer in silence 

At a mother's broken shrine, 

For the woman who rocks the baby 

In the room just next to mine. 



Now and then the winds blow a leaf of hers from 
the desert or from San Diego, where she edits her 
Golden Era Magazine — when she can get a cowboy to 
carry copy out from the Colorado Desert — away beyond 
the seas to Europe; but her own country has been 
careless about her, save to pick up her thoughts and 
air them in the poet's corner of the classics as time 
surges by. And she has been and is quite as careless 
of the world; brave, bonnie, beautiful little Madge 
Morris. 

Here are the two extremes of song— the solitude, 
nakedness, desolation, mystery and awful death and 
dearth of the boundless desert; and the crooning cradle 
song the baby, whose utmost bound and limit of life 
is its mother's encircling arms. She has pictured life 
and death. You can hear the mother rocking, rocking. 
You can see the dead men lying in the sands in her 
song of the Colorado Desert as you rarely see shapes 
in any song. 

"Some lengthwise sun-dried shapes with feet 
and hands." 

And right here I say that the coyote is photographed 
in a single line more correctly than he has yet been 
described in columns. 

I concede that it is not melodious to say, "he howls 
and howls and howls and howls," but then the coyote 
is not traveling on his notes, he is not melodious, he 
simply howls. Then he howls more, then more and 
more. That is all. God made him. Madge Morris did 
not make him. She merely took his photograph, and 
for the first time it ever was really taken. 

In conclusion let me assure you that Mrs. Wagner 
has not written of the desert from a car window. On 
the contrary she knows and she loves the desert as 
a sailor knows and loves the ocean. Her tent is there 
season after season and the mercury above par. 

I think little more need be said here. Turn back 
again and read about the rocking of the baby. And if 
there are not tears in your eyes and tenderness in your 
heart, if you are not better indeed for the reading of 
it in all respects, why all that I might say in these 
pages till the going down of the sun would neither 
profit you nor please you. 



TO MADGE MORRIS 

(Author of "Liberty's Bell") 

. . . O, Patriotic Singer thou, 
Whose poems are made up of dew and fire! 

Thy song so well of liberty hath told 
That little ones, who now its measures hear, 
May one day wrench from hands of tyrants bold 
The blessings that our fathers held so dear, 
Their inspiration gained from strains that ring 
Through Memory's hall, thy song re-echoing. 

— Mrs. Carl Schutze. 



FROM JAMES WOODS DAVIDSON 

(Author of "The Poetry of The Future") 

"I have looked through Madge Morris' poems with 
great interest, and am much pleased to find a vigor of 
expression and a rhythmical resonance of word-music 
that are altogether too rare in recent poetry. There is 
also a forward step in escaping from the shackles of 
artificiality of our procrustean prosodists. The poet 
has caught some of the spirit that breathes in the 
'glorious climate of California.' " 

[Excerpt from a letter to Ella Sterling Mighels, 
author of "The Story of the Files" and other noted 
Californian books.] 



TO MADGE MORRIS 

(Author of "A Titled Plebeian") 

These are the songs the singer sings 

(Weird, grotesque, and beautiful things), 

Whispers of sun-skies, amber-rimmed; 

Echoes of Nature, tear be-dimmed, 

And in and out through the minor strain 

Is woven a slender thread of gold, 

Rapture, passion, sarcasm, and pain, 

All that the burning words can hold, 

As she sweeps the strings of her magic lyre, 

And sings and sings with her heart on fire. 

— Rose Hartwick Thorpe. 



TO MADGE MORRIS 

Whose voice of poetic eloquence 
Appealing to the heart, and thence, 
With strange sweet fascination, still, 
Entrancing all my soul at will; 
Holding before my gaze 

Sweet Nature's face 
Until my heart would know and feel 
The secrets she would fain reveal. 



Charles Grissen. 



fire-souled, fretless desert, I am come 

Alone, all xveary hearted, unto thee, 
The world's falsetto and little thrum 
Still droning in mp ears. 

1 came to claim thee, desert, — 

/ am J^in to thee. 



INDEX 

Page 

The Lure of the Desert 1 

£ Quien Sabe? 2 

To the Colorado Desert 3 

In the Yucca Land 4 

Tehachapi 6 

My Heart and All Life's Sweet Alluring Charms.... 6 

Rocking the Baby 7 

Men Have Fought for Liberty 8 

Liberty's Bell 8 

The Crowning of Liberty 12 

The Passing of McKinley 14 

Cuba 16 

What Has a Man When It All Is Attained 17 

"He Hitched His Wagon to a Star" 17 

The Woodsman's Philosophy 18 

The Oracle 20 

The Little Brown Bird 22 

A Stained Lily 24 

Somebody's Baby's Dead 26 

Interregnum 27 

The Sea and the Wind 27 

Society 28 

An Empiric 28 

Mother 29 

Dead Love 30 

Fate 31 

Under the Sea 32 

The Undertone of Song 34 

To a Mummy 35 

Sappho to Phaon 36 

Her Christmas Gift 38 

Ah, Me ! 39 

I Have Folded Them Up and Put Them Away 40 

My Ships Have Come From the Sea 42 

Break Down the Door 45 

Easter Lilies 46 

The Christmas Cross 48 

Genesis 49 

A Thought 50 

A Mood 50 

All Hallowe'en 51 

Under the Grass 51 

Bendita 52 

I Wonder If Ever the Angel Who Holds 52 

Toasts 53 

To Truth 53 

To Whom It May Concern 53 

To California 53 

If I and You No More Were Said 54 

To You 55 



I N D E X— Continued Page 

Distance Is Cruel 56 

Dead Days 58 

When Will My Soul Go 58 

When the Roses Go 59 

Pearlie Is Gone Away 60 

A Picture 61 

Two Must Be Two 62 

An Inward Glance 65 

In a Vision 66 

Coronals 68 

Inconsistence 69 

But One Little Stocking 70 

My Soul and 1 71 

Across the Great Divide 72 

My Brother 73 

The Fairy of the Heights 74 

Valentine 75 

Not Acclimated 76 

Question 77 

I Have Never, You Think, a Serious Thought 78 

Unanswered 78 

Query 79 

The Red Winds Blow 80 

A Peace Conference 84 

California 86 

The Opening of the California Poppies 87 

The Golden Gate 88 

To Clara Shortridge-Foltz 90 

Mount Whitney 91 

Welcoming the G. A. R. to California 92 

San Francisco 94 

A Legend of Sutro Heights 96 

Helen Hunt Jackson 101 

In the Foothills of the Sierras 102 

The Wheat of San Joaquin 103 

Thanksgiving at Montara 104 

They All Are Kin to You 105 

At San Diego 106 

The Last Priestess of the Sun 109 

The Builders 109 

Native Daughters of the Golden West 110 

Wonderful Mysterious Mexico Ill 

Alaska's Woman 112 

What Know You of My Soul's Inherent Strife 114 

Songs That Have Been Set to Music 115 

Love's Way 116 

God Bless You Wherever You Are 117 

The Dryads 118 

The Sign of the Cross 119 

That Day in Texas 120 

Canst Thou Not Hear Me 121 

Just This One Day 122 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE LURE OF THE DESERT LAND 

Have you slept in a tent alone — a tent 

Out under the desert sky — 
Where a thousand thousand desert miles 

All silent round you lie? — 
The dust of the aeons of ages dead, 

And the peoples that trampled by? 

Have you looked in the desert's painted cup, 
Have you smelled at dawn the wild sage musk, 

Have you seen the lightning flashing up 
From the ground in the desert dusk? 

Have you heard the song in the desert rain 
(Like the undertone of a wordless rhyme)? 

Have you watched the glory of colors flame 
In its marvel of blossom time? 

Have you lain with your face in your hands, 
afraid, 
Face down — flat down on your face — and 
prayed, 
While the terrible sand storm whirled and swirled 

In its soundless fury, and hid the world 
And quenched the sun in its yellow glare — 
Just you, and your soul, and nothing, there? 

If you have, then you know, for you've felt its 
spell, 

The lure of the desert land, 
And if you have not, then I could not tell — 

For you could not understand. 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



QUIEN SABE?* 

"Where do the waters go that go 

To the sands of the bleached Majave?' 
I asked of an ancient Indian man 

(Lingering trace of his vanished race) : 
"Do they sink in the sand 
To the underland?" 

With never a bend of his stately head, 

Nor look, or the lurk of a smile, he said : 



Quien sabe?" 



"Surely thou knowest, thou primal man! 
Brood of the desert's birth, and ban, — 
Wise as the rattlesnake, old as the sun, 
Where do the rivers run that run 
To the sands of thy grim Majave? 

Do they sink in the sand 

To the underland? — 
Down where the red volcano's glow 
Lieth await for the underflow? 
Down where the salt-sea left its scum 
When the earth was void and the deep was 

dumb?" 

"^ Quien sabe?" 

* Who knows? 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



TO THE COLORADO DESERT 

Thou brown, bare-breasted, voiceless mystery, 
Hot sphinx of nature, cactus-crowned, what hast 

thou done? 
Unclothed and mute as when the groans of chaos 

turned 
Thy naked burning bosom to the sun. 
The mountain silences have speech, the rivers 

sing. 
Thou answerest never unto anything. 
Pink-throated lizards pant in thy slim shade ; 
The horned toad runs rustling in the heat; 
The shadowy gray coyote, born afraid, 
Steals to some brackish spring and laps, and 

prowls 
Away; and howls, and howls and howls and 

howls, 
Until the solitude is shaken with an added lone- 
liness. 
Thy sharp mescal shoots up a giant stalk, 
Its century of yearning, to the sunburnt skies, 
And drips rare honey from the lips 
Of yellow waxen flowers, and dies. 
Some lengthwise sun-dried shapes with feet and 

hands 
And thirsty mouths pressed on the sweltering 

sands, 
Mark here and there a gruesome graveless spot 
Where some one drank thy scorching hotness, 

and is not. 
God must have made thee in His anger, and 

forgot. 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



IN THE YUCCA LAND 

The rim of the desert is the Yucca land, 
Behind it the snow-peaked ranges stand. 
Beyond it, and out, the desert lies, — 
And far as the line of the tenting skies. 
"The ship of the desert" sails there at dawn 
In the swift mirage; and there, up-drawn 
From violet seas, in the sunrise glow 
Are the coral reefs the mermen know; 
And the perfumed plains where the iris grow. 
Out there where the web of the gossamer flies 
The shoals of the purple islands rise, 
Out there are the pink gray mists unrolled, 
And the sun goes down on a world of gold, 
In the Yucca land. 

The grimness of time, is the Yucca land, 
When twilight reaches her specter hand, 
When the moon bends down, a living thing, 
And the midnight stars are whispering! 
The Yucca glades are peopled, then, 
With naiads and gnomes and the ghosts of men; 
From the inner earth, from the Everywhere, 
They come, and they walk in the moonlight there. 
The dryads step from the Yucca trees 
And lean white arms on the wavering breeze. 
There, a pallid priestness counts her beads, 
Yon arch to a Druid temple leads. 
Aye ; and yonder Yucca, whose grim shape warns, 
Is the cross of Him, and His crown of thorns. 
There are stealthy shadows, a phantom whir — 
The night vibrates with a soundless stir; 
And oh, the silence ! so tense, so terse, 
You can hear the heart of the Universe. 
The desert its mystery unbars 
To you and the moon and the whispering stars, 
In the Yucca land. 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



The newness of earth, is the Yucca land, 
The tang of the first-made gleam of sand, 
Not ever a plow profaned its sod, — 
The world is so new you could talk with God, 
In the Yucca land. 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



TEHACHAPI 

Vanguard of the desert thou ! The high divide 

Between the ocean's all life-giving atmosphere 

And that vast arid world 

Where bleak Mojave stretches to the east. 

From thy brave front dwarfed pines look desert- 
ward 

Against the sun. And up the steep slants at thy 
base 

Defiant bristling yucca trees climb scantily. 

The brewing place of storms art thou, — of clouds 

That come unheralded, — vague whims of fleeci- 
ness — 

All piling up in wonderments of shapes. 

White towers, and domes of glistening ivory, 

And golden pinnacles the sunlight plays upon. 

Or blown by warring winds whirl round and 
round thy head 

Black helpless furies, — vampires of the night. 

Then dawn ; and lo, thou standest robed in sacred 
white. 



My heart and all life's sweet alluring charms 
I leave here in the desert wilderness. 

There is no joy outside of your dear arms, 
No heaven beyond the reach of your caress. 

Soul of the desert silences. 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



ROCKING THE BABY 

I hear her rocking the baby — 
Her room is just next to mine — 
And I fancy I feel the dimpled arms 
That round her neck entwine, 
As she rocks, and rocks the baby, 
In the room just next to mine. 

I hear her rocking the baby 

Each day when the twilight comes, 

Oh ! I know there's a world of blessing and love 

In the "baby bye" she hums. 

I can see the restless fingers 

Playing with "mamma's rings," 

And the sweet little smiling, pouting mouth, 

That to hers in kissing clings, 

As she rocks and sings to the baby, 

And dreams as she rocks and sings. 

I hear her rocking the baby, 

Slower and slower now, 

I know she is leaving her good-night kiss 

On its eyes, and cheeks, and brow. 

From her rocking, rocking, rocking, 

I wonder would she start, 

Could she know, through the wall between us, 

She is rocking on my heart. 

While my empty arms are aching 

For a form they may not press 

And my emptier heart is breaking 

In its desolate loneliness, 

I list to the rocking, rocking, 

In the room just next to mine, 

And breathe a prayer in silence 

At a mother's broken shrine, 

For the woman who rocks the baby 

In the room just next to mine. 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



Men have fought for Liberty and told her battles oer t 
And died still listening to her far-off call, 

Since Miriam struck her timbrel on the Red Sea's shore, 
And sang deliverance from Egypt's thrall. 



LIBERTY'S BELL 

There's a legend told of a far-off land — 
The land of a king — where the people planned 
To build them a bell that never should ring 
But to tell of the death, or the birth, of a king, 
Or proclaim an event, by its swinging slow, 
That could startle a nation to joy or woe. 

It was not to be builded — this bell that they 

planned — 
Of common ore dug from the breast of the land, 
But of metal first moulded by skill of all arts — 
Built of the treasures of fond human hearts. 

And from all o'er the land like pilgrims they 

came, 
Each to cast in a burden, a mite in the flame 
Of the furnace — his offering — to mingle and swell 
In the curious mass of this wonderful bell. 

Knights came in armor and flung in the shields 
That had warded off blows on the Saracen fields ; 
Freemen brought chains from prisons afar — 
Bonds that had fettered the captives of war. 
And sabers were cast in the molten flood 
Stained with the crimson of heroes' blood. 
Pledges of love, a bracelet, a ring, 
A gem that had gleamed in the crown of a king; 
The coins that had ransomed a maiden from 
death, 



8 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



The words, hot with eloquence, caught from the 

breath 
Of a sage, and the prayer on the lips of a slave 
Were heard and recorded, and cast in the wave 
To be melted and moulded together, and tell 
The tale of their wrongs in the tones of the bell. 

It was finished at last, and, by artisan hand, 
On its ponderous beams hung high o'er the land. 
The slow years passed by but no sound ever fell 
On a listening ear from the tongue of the bell. 
The brown spider wove her frail home on its 

walls, 
The dust settled deep in its cavernous halls. 
Men laughed in derision, and scoffed at the pains 
Of the builders; and harder and harder the chains 
Of a tyrannous might on the people were laid ; 
More insatiate, more servile, the tribute they 

paid ; 
There was something they found far more cruel 

than death, 
And something far sweeter than life's fleeting 

breath. 

[William O. McDowell, a liberty-loving patriot, of 
Lincoln Park, Newark, N. J., saw "Liberty's Bell," the 
poem by Madge Morris Wagner, tacked up beside the 
old Liberty Bell in historic Independence Hall, Phila- 
delphia. It gave him an inspiration to build a Columbian 
Liberty Bell as outlined in the poem. He began the 
work. His children were the first contributors; then 
the Daughters of the Revolution, headed by Mrs. Adlai 
Stevenson, took it up; the governors of all the States 
appointed committees; and it grew and grew until 
250,000 historical relics and gifts were received to be 
molded into his bell. So it became the great National 
Bell, at the Columbian World's Fair. Chicago by its 
legal authorities, set apart the Fourth of July, 1893, as 
Liberty Bell Day, and gave to Mrs. Madge Morris Wag- 
ner and Wm. O. McDowell the freedom of the City. 
It has been customary since the world began to recog- 
nize high officials, but seldom have cities so honored 
those whose best endeavor has been in the direction of 
the sentiment and soul of liberty.] 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



But, hark ! in the midst of the turbulent throng, 
The moans of the weak and the groans of the 

strong, 
There's a cry of alarm. Some invisible power 
Is moving the long silent bell in the tower. 
Forward and backward, and forward it swung, 
And Liberty ! Liberty ! Liberty ! rung 
From its wide, brazen throat, over mountain and 

vale. 
Till the seas caught its echo and monarchs turned 

pale. 

Our forefathers heard it — that wild, thrilling 

tone, 
Ringing out to the world, and they claimed it 

their own. 
And up from the valley, and down from the hill, 
From the flame of the forge, the field, and the 

mill, 
They paid with their lives the price of its due, 
And left it a legacy, freemen, to you. 
And ever when danger is menacing nigh, 
The mighty bell swings in the belfry on high, 
And men wake from their dreams, and grasp in 

affright, 
Their swords, when its warning sweeps out on 

the night. 

It rang a wild paean o'er war's gory waves 
When the gyves were unloosed from our millions 

of slaves ; 
It started with horror and trembled a knell 



10 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



From ocean to ocean, when great Lincoln fell. 
And once in each year as time onward rolls, 
Slowly and muffled and mournful it tolls 
A dirge, while Columbia pauses to spread 
A tribute of love on the graves of her dead. 

While Washington's name is emblazoned in gold, 
Or the valor of Lee, or of Sheridan, told, 
While patriots treasure the words of a Hayne, 
The fiery drops from the pen of a Paine ; 
While the memory of Morris it's sacrifice gave, 
And gratitude lingers to weep at his grave; 
While dear is the name of child, mother or wife, 
Or sweet to a soul is the measure of life, 
America's sons will to battle prepare 
When its tones of alarm ring aloud on the air. 
For Liberty's goddess holds in her white hand 
The cord of the bell that swings over our land. 



11 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE CROWNING OF LIBERTY 

She came on that immortal morn, — 

So pale, so wan, and weeping so! 
Fair Liberty; bowed with the scorn 

That wrought a suffering people's woe. 

She spoke, and in her pleading tones 

A voice came ringing o'er the sea 
From fallen Roma's crumbling thrones, 

From graves of old Thermopylae. 

The listening breezes heard her plea, 

They told it to the summer morn, 
'Twas whispered by each forest tree, 

And by each blade of rustling corn. 

'Twas murmured by the brooklet's waves, 
The echoing mountains caught the cry 

And flung it back to ocean's caves — • 
The ocean rolled it to the sky. 

Our patriot sires — that grand old band — 
Had met in troubled council throng, 

If that they might, to quench the brand, 
Where smouldering burned a Nation's wrong. 

They heard fair Liberty's appeal, 

They gazed upon her matchless form ; 

Each faltering nerve grew firm as steel, 
Each breast was bared to meet the storm. 

A moment low those stern heads bowed 

In solemn, silent awe of prayer, 
And then a wild shout, long and loud, 

Burst out upon the quivering air. 



12 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



The spirit, roused, would sleep no more, 
And each in turn, on bended knee, 

With brow uncovered, reverent swore, 
Eternal faith to Liberty! 

Her torn and bleeding feet they dressed 
In sandals wrought of maiden gold, 

Into her trembling hand they pressed 
The scepter from a Monarch's hold. 

They broke the fetters that had led 
Her captive in their cruel scars, 

And bound upon her regal head 
A flashing coronet of stars. 

Their fortunes, lives, their all, alone, 
They fastened, with her mantle's sheen 

Gave her their proud hearts for a throne, 
And Liberty was crowned our Queen. 

The deed a world then laughed to mock 
Has swept in Majesty of State, 

From Massachusetts' Plymouth Rock, 
To California's Golden Gate. 

Her heritage from sea to sea, 

A land that owns no craven's right, 

Where but to be is to be free, 

Her flag the symbol of her might. 



13 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE PASSING OF McKINLEY 

Black, black, all black, our open door is closed 
with ebon bars ; 
For woe like this there are no creeds, no bonds, 
no social bourns : 
Black, black, all black! half-masted hangs Old 
Glory's stripes and stars — 

The great republic mourns. 

Low, low he lies, so low ! the nation's chief, the 
nation's pride; 
So still the careful hands which steered his 
country's danger past; 
So dumb the tongue whose golden speech our 
faith had justified: 
God's seal of rest upon his breast, and peace, 
and home, at last. 

The shot that felled McKinley jarred the round 

earth's rim; 

It aimed at law, all law, it aimed at heaven's 

high throne, — 

For doth the firmament not move by law of Him, 

And seed and harvest time from zone to zone? 

Calamity stared grimly black the whole world in 
the face 
When anarchy, foul-brooded spawn of slime 
and mud, 
Spat her corroding venom to the highest place 
And smeared the down-step to her den with 
blood. 



14 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



Not, not alone McKinley's life — brave life that 
bore no stain, 
Great statesman, gentlest husband, man of 
Christian men — 
He stood for us, each one, and in him were our 
brothers slain, 
And our dead fathers in his death did die again. 

Black, black, all black, our open door is closed 
with ebon bars; 
For woe like this there are no creeds, no bonds, 
no social bourns ; 
Black, black, all black! half-masted hangs Old 
Glory's stripes and stars — 

The great republic mourns. 



15 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



CUBA 

On her war beleaguered island 
Cuba stands and fights alone. 

And her strangling cry for freedom 
Shakes the glory of a throne. 

Stands beside her ruined altars 
Flame and sword engirded round, 

Sees her maidens torn from shelter, 
Sacrilege on holy ground. 

Flame and sword and desecration, 
Wrongs that Satan's self abhors, 

All the barbarous, shameless, nameless 
Savagery of civil wars. 

O, ye synod of the nations, 

Shall you, to this struggling land, 

Give no sign of recognition, 
Raise no voice, uplift no hand? 

Vain your teaching, false your preaching, 
While yon royal flag of Spain 

With the cross of Christ upon it 
Floats above such fields of slain. 



16 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poem: 



What has a man when it all is attained, — 
Ambition, and glory, and glitter of fame — 
Or wealth with the burden of folly it gained, 
And burnt out his candle in winning the game. 
Then darkness, and lo! at the end of the strife, 
He has fought for a phantom his senses to cheat, 
And missed all the sweetness and rhythm of life 
And the flowers that grew at his feet. 



"HE HITCHED HIS WAGON TO A STAR" 

He hitched his wagon to a star 

With brave intent, 
He hitched his wagon to a star, — 

The highest in the firmament. 

He bent his shoulder to the spokes 

And lifted with his might; 
His feet were in the sordid mire, 

His face was toward the light. 

He heard the boom of breaking worlds 

That starred the Milky Way; 
He saw the wardens of the sun 

Roll back the gates of day. 

And though he never turned a wheel, 
Felt not the hurt the vanquished feel ; — 

Through far high vistas vast and dim, 
The highest star still beckoned him. 



17 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE WOODMAN'S PHILOSOPHY 

The woodman was tall, and brawny, and brown, 
And broad of the shoulder, and muscled was he, 
As a king of athletes ; — not a club in the town 
Could produce such a biceps. I came and sat 

down 
To listen, and see, — 

For the ring of his axe it was music to me. 
He swung the broad blade with a curve at the 

start, 
And a movement of wrist never learned of "Del- 

sarte." 
His knuckles shone white through the brown of 

his skin, 
With a "whan !" went his breath as the sharp 

edge sank in 
To the heart of the tree ; and the sappy chips flew 
And scattered and rattled like hail on the ground; 
And the axe gave a "screak" as he twisted it 

round 
To loosen the blade from the cleft it had made. 
The back of his hand o'er his forehead he drew, — 
His hand was so sinewy strong — Ah ! I knew 
The man was a king; I said to him, "Sire, 
There's many a tree in your forest to fell, 
Pray what do you do when you tire?" 
"What do I?" said he, with a smile on his lip, 
"When the handle gets slick and commences to 

slip, 
I spit on my hands and take a fresh grip." 



18 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



Not with saber, and cannon, and banners un- 
furled, 

The new Alexander will conquer the world; 

He'll have sweat on his brow, and a smile on 
his lip, 

And when fortune begins through his ringers to 

slip, 
He'll "spit on his hands and take a fresh grip." 



19 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE ORACLE 

"This year, next year, now, never!" 
Shyly to herself, she said, 

Tapered fingers, swift and clever, 
Pick to pieces daisy's head — 

That its oracle may tell her 

When the day that she shall wed. 

Fall the petals ever, ever, 
"This year, next year, now, never.' 

Pretty maiden, who shall scold her, 
If she sighs, and shakes her head! 

Has the oracle not told her 
She shall never, never wed? 

Half agrieved, she glances over 

Where the field and meadow meet- 
Flushes redder than the clover 
Blossoms blushing at her feet. 

Farmer's son, the nearest neighbor, 

— Stalwart he, and tall, and lithe- 
Pausing in the swath his labor, 
Deftly whets his gleaming scythe; 



20 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



Pulls his hat a little lower, 
Steps aside to let her pass, 

Stammering asks if he may show her 
Where's a lark's nest in the grass : 

Clasps her hand a little stronger 

Than necessity allows, 
As their shadows growing longer 

Warn her she must find the cows. 

Pretty maid in sunset glory, 
Thinks the daisy told a story. 



21 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE LITTLE BROWN BIRD 

A little bird sat in her nest on the ground, 

A wee, wee little brown bird; 
Sat thinking the song in the tall poplar tree 

The sweetest she ever had heard. — 
And up came a lump in the little bird's throat; — 
She never could sing a note. 

She looked at the bird in the tall poplar tree, 
On its head was a wonderful crest; 

Its wings they were spangled with velvet and 
gold 
And red was the flame on its breast. — 

Oh, never a feather of color had she, 

She was brown as a bird could be. 

The bright plumaged bird in the tall poplar tree 
Sang longer and sweeter her strain. 

The little brown bird drooped lower her head 
And listened in envious pain. 

Click! Bang! broke a murderous sound on the 
breeze; 

It rustled the leaves on the trees. 

And down through the rustling leaves came the 

bird. 
There were stains on each leaf which she 

brushed. 
The red on her breast it was redder with blood 



22 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



And the voice of her singing was hushed. 
The hunter had heard her wild song on the limb 
And her breast made a target for him. 

In penitent pity the little brown bird 

Drew closer each sheltering wing; 
And the wee baby birds hidden under her breast 

Are glad that their mother can't sing. 



23 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



A STAINED LILY 

Some lilies grew by a brook-side, 

Tall and white, and cold, 
And lifted up to the sunshine 

Their beautiful hearts of gold. 

And near to their bed grew mosses, 
Rank vines, and flowers small, 

And loathsome weeds, and thistles, 
And the sunlight warmed them all. 

Anon, the proud white lilies 
Were gathered, one by one, 

Each to crown a festal, 
The rarest under the sun. 

One lily stopped to the brooklet, 
Her face she knew was fair, 

And the face of the flowing water 
Mirrored her image there. 

A hand, upraised in envy, 

Or carelessness, or jest, 
Flung, from the turbid water, 

Mud, on the lily's breast. 

And all the proud, white lilies 

Turned their faces away, 
And nobody plucked that lily, 

And day, and night, and day 



24 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



She wept for her ruined beauty: 
And the dew-drops, and the rain, 

Touched with her tears, in pity 
Fell on the muddy stain. 

Still stood she in her grieving, 

Day, and night, and day; 
Nor tears, nor dew, nor rain-drops 

Could fade the stain away. 

Pining in desolation, 

Shunned by each of her kind, 
Sought she a bitter solace 

In creatures of coarser mind. 

But the breath of the nettle stung her, 
And the thistle's rude embrace 

Burned her sensitive nature, 
And scarred the fair, stained face. 

Lower, drooped the lily, 

And died at the feet of the weeds; 
And only the tender mosses 

Ministered to her needs. 

And still the tall white lilies 

Stand as cold, and proud, 
And still the weeds and thistles 

Against the lilies crowd. 

Alike the same warm sunbeams 

On weed and flower fall, 
Alike by the same soil nourished, 

And the great God made them all. 



25 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



SOMEBODY'S BABY'S DEAD 

A hearse all draped in mourning, 
With white plumes overhead, 

Bearing a little coffin — ■ 
Somebody's baby's dead. 

Upon the satin cover 

Some hand has placed a wreath, 
White as the waxen features 

Of the baby that lies beneath. 

Out in the graveyard making 
A rest for a shining head, 

Somebody's heart is breaking, 
Somebody's baby's dead. 

Over a baby's coffin, 

Heaping a mound of clay, 

Somebody's hopes are buried 
In that little grave today. 

Somebody's home is dreary, 
Somebody's sunshine fled; 

Somebody's sad and weary, 
Somebody's baby's dead. 



26 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



INTERREGNUM 

"Out of my way!" cried the brave New Year, 

"Out of my way," sang he; 
"Make way for my bride, Old Year; aside, 

"Aside, Old Year!" sang he, — 
"Make way for my bride and me." 

He smiled as he tossed his locks of tawn, 
Red crowned with the rosy glimpse of dawn. 
He smiled and sang, and sang again, 
And the Old Year sighed: "Amen, 
Ah me, Amen !" — and he stepped aside. 
But he opened his long black mantle wide 
And close to his shriveling breast he pressed 
The bride of the brave New Year. 



THE SEA AND THE WIND 

"Whither away?" sighed the Sea to the Wind, 
"Where goeth, where bloweth thou?" 

"I go," said the Wind, "to blow," said the Wind, 
"The secret thou sighest now." 

"Why bidest thou here?" said the Wind to the 
Sea, 

"Why hidest thou here thy worth?" 
"I bide," said the Sea, "to hide," said the Sea, 

"The wrecks of thy cruel mirth." 



27 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



SOCIETY 

Go down in the perilous ocean deeps 

For the treasures hidden there. 
Bring gems that have lain in a dead man's eyes 

To gleam in a woman's hair. 
Slay a million birds — small mother birds — 

Till your soul of pity dies. 
In the cup that is rusted with tears of woe 

Drink a toast to your lady's eyes. 
Have faith in the wiles and the cheating smiles 

You hug to your foolish breast, 
Thrust to the wall, beyond recall, 

The hearts that have loved you best. 
Over and over, the rose, and the mold, 

The social tales of the world are told. 



AN EMPIRIC 

What is there ever in living — 
To live, and to live, and to live? 

Nay; not the gift, but the giving — 
What hast thou, mortal, to give? 

The songs that come up from the silence 
Of graves where Self lieth slain; 

Gethsemane's red drops of passion, 
And the pitiful pleasure of pain — 
These are thy gifts, and thy gain. 



28 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



MOTHER 

I went away against her will, — 

Home was so small, the world so wide, 
And I so full of foolish pride. 

Why should she take my going ill? 

Why weight her heart with useless sighs, 
And hurt me with her streaming eyes? 

I came at last, I crossed the sea 

To lay my head upon her breast 
And tell her that our dear home nest 

Was larger than the world to me. — 
It may be in her silken shroud 
She wondered why I wept aloud. 



29 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



DEAD LOVE 

There is no dead thing in this world so dead 
As love that has been slain. 

Think not that you 
Can lightly toy with it, and set your foot 
Upon its heart for pleasurance, and wound 
The ground with its red blood, then bid it rise 
And stand all blushing new again 
Beside you. 

Nay; though from the mouldy grave 
Your power could take the skeleton, and all 
Its mildewed joints habilitate with living flesh, 
You, yet, could not bring dead love back to life. 



30 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



FATE 

Ruth was a laughing-eyed prattler, 

Thoughtless, and happy, and free; 
She planted a seed in the garden, 

And said : "It will grow to a tree — 
A beautiful blossoming tree." 

The birds and the squirrels played round it, 

As careless and merry was she, 
But no tree ever grew from her planting — 

No beautiful, blossoming tree. 

Ruth was a winsome-faced maiden, 

Happy, and hopeful, and free; 
She planted a seed in the garden, 

And smilingly waited to see — 
A beautiful, blossoming tree. 

She covered the ground up with flowers, 

The butterfly came, and the bee, 
But no tree ever grew from her planting — 

No beautiful, blossoming tree. 

Ruth was a pale, saddened woman, 

Thoughtful, with tremblings and fears ; 

She planted a seed in the garden, 
And watered the place with her tears — 

And watched it with tremblings and fears. 

The winds and the rains beat upon it, 
The lightnings flashed o'er it in glee ; 

But she sleeps 'neath the tree of her planting — 
A beautiful, blossoming tree. 



31 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



UNDER THE SEA 

A fisherman rocked in his boat on the tide 

And dropped his net in the sea, 
He sang as he worked, and the rising tide 
Drifted his voice to the water-side — 

Echoed his voice on the lea. 

A maiden mended the fisherman's nets 

At the water-side on the lea, 
She listened and longed as she patient wrought, 
And no sound was so sweet, the maiden thought, 

As the fisherman's song on the sea. 

A maiden stood in the misty light 

Gazing out o'er the water wide, 
Straining her eyes through the paling light, 
And around her feet in the deepening night, 

Crept slowly the rising tide. 

The mermaids braided the maiden's hair 

Under the depths of the sea — 
Braided her long, bright golden hair 
Into a shimmering wonderful snare 

Under the fathomless sea. 

The fisherman smiled as he sang his song, 

For a maid too fond and fair — 
A mermaid floated the waves along, 
She caught the soul of the fisherman's song 

In a net of golden hair. 



32 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



And ever and e'er when the twilight falls, 

And the moonlight pales on the sea, 
A voice on the ear of the fisherman falls, 
A song that his soul and his sense enthralls 
Drifts over the lonesome sea. 

And deaf to the warning that death is there, 

He follows the song of the sea; 
But he comes not back for a shimmering snare, 
A wonderful weft of golden hair 

Is waiting him under the sea. 



33 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE UNDERTONE OF SONG 

A broad flat rock the creek goes rippling round, 
Where overhanging leaves make pictures in the 

sun. 
The silence is not broken by a sound 
Save that of Autumn's making; surely one 
Might stay and dream, and dreaming might forget 
That there were aught in all the world to do 
But dream ! 

A mother quail and her full score 
Of pretty running fledgelings stop, then whir into 
The safer undergrowth which skirts the water 

shore. 
A cone from yon tall pine falls heavily, the spoil 
Of some marauding squirrel's teeth ; and through 
Far hights a mountain vulture sails a sea of blue. 
These do but trend the fancies to a dream ; 

And yet, 
That strenuous straight line of rusty ants along 
The streamlet's bank keeps faith with never end- 
ing human toil, — 
Its moving rhythm the undertone of song. 



34 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



TO A MUMMY 

Did death come when that form was young and 

fair 
And lissome, and awake to flattery's praise, 
Or when, with heavy step and whitened hair, 
Thou'dst lingered out life's longest span of days? 
And did that heart with joy or grieving swell? 
Who now can tell? 

Wast thou a sorceress Cleopatra, with 
The splendor of all Egypt in thine eyes? 
Or didst thou walk, Diana-like, the world, 
A bloodless statue made in woman's guise? 
Thou senseless thing! What matters it to thee? 
And what to me? 

O shrunken, shriveled shape. If I could bring 
Thy roundness back, the blood into thy cheek, 
And all life's spell once more upon thee fling, 
What wouldst thou tell me? If thy tongue could 

speak, 
The secrets of the pyramids wouldst thou 
Reveal, or laugh at Israelitish mother's tears, 
Or shuddering with horror tell me how 
It feels to lie entombed a thousand years ? 



35 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



SAPPHO TO PHAON 

God, God ! How I have loved thee, Phaon, — 

My soul's husband. 

When the brilliancy of Mitylene turned 

Full face to me and crowned me queen, 

One kiss of thine was more 

Than all of Greece's glory. 

And when thou earnest forth 

To win thyself a name, and fame, 
I was so glad — so glad that thou wast great, 
So proud to be thy lesser mate. 
I would be thy left hand, and thou my right. 
When Athens wrote the name of Phaon on her 

walls 
The name of Sappho would be wrote beside it. 
Phaon and Sappho ever spoken in one breath. 
Phaon and Sappho one in life and death. 

Ten thousand liars had prated since the world 
began 

Of love, one love, one woman and one man. 

And measuring thy love by mine 
I dreamed that it could be. 
Man's love is but a winged fool that flies 

From pretty face to pretty face, 
Nor finds a strong abiding rest in any place. 
A sensuous shapely form, and well-tricked eyes 
Will handicap a soul in any race 

Where love's the prize 

And man is umpire in the case. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



Phaon's name is on the tongue of every one, 
Alcaeus and Stesichorus, they pale in Phaon's 
sun. 

And 'tis not Sappho walks by Phaon's side. 

'Tis her — not me — that Lesbos names with 
thee. 
But though, while yet the dew is on thy fame 

Thou hast forgotten me 
And spurned the wondrous sweetness of our love, 
I tell thee, Phaon, I am greater still than thou; 
And I will live when thou art only known 

Because that Sappho loved thee. 



37 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



HER CHRISTMAS GIFT 

"I have nothing to give you, darling, 

For a Christmas gift tonight, 
Not even the tiniest present 

To keep my memory bright ; 
Nothing at all to give you 

Only my love," she said. 
She said it so wistfully, so sad, 

And she blushed, and hung her head. 

We were poor, as the world would count it — 

My little wife and I, — 
And the Christmas time, with its joyous chime, 

Neglectful passed us by. 

Only her love to give me ! 

Oh ! she could not, could not see 
That she gave from the source of giving, 

Her Christmas gift to me. 
Only her love she gave me, 

And rich as a king am I, 
And there is not gold enough in the world 

Her Christmas gift to buy. 



38 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



AH ME! 

She reached her pretty hands to me, 

Ah Me! 
She reached her pretty hands to me, — 
She held them out imploringly. 
A fox glove grew just where she stood 
Within the border of the wood. 

Ah Me! 

And then — oh, then, I could not go, 

Ah Me! 
And then I could not— would not — go, 
I turned away and left her so. 
Left her, her pretty hands out held, — 
Her heart with pent-up grieving swelled, 

Ah Me! 

Within the border of the wood, 

Ah Me! 
Within the shadow of the wood 
The fox glove grows yet where she stood. 
And I could go — and would — if she 
Would reach her pretty hands to me. 

Ah Me! 



39 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 

I HAVE FOLDED THEM UP AND PUT 
THEM AWAY 

I have folded them up, and put them away, 
Each dainty garment you used to wear, 
The little kid shoes with the tasseled tops, 
And the long bright lock of your golden hair; 
And hot tears fell unchecked, untold, 
Over garment, and shoe, and tress of gold. 

The little dishes — the china cups 

And saucers, and plates with gilted bands, 

You washed them last and piled them here 

In the painted box with your dear, small hands. 

The music-book with the lesson marked, 
Your fingers touched with such fairy ease, 
Ran over the notes, then tired, and failed, 
And fell from the task on the ivory keys. 

And I found a letter among the things 

So idly thrown on an idle stand, 

"My precious Mamma," the lines began, 

Wrote in the scrawl of a childish hand. 

O, I little dreamed when I read it over, 

And carelessly laid it here away, 

That through blinding tears for your sweet dead 

face, 
I would read the letter again today. 

Every place in this desolate house, 

From night to night, and from dawn to dawn, 

Wherever I go, wherever I look, 

There is something to mind me that you are gone. 



40 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



So I folded them up and put them away, 
And locked them out of my sight forever; 
And I have not spoken your name since then 
To keep from thinking. — Vain endeavor! 

When has turning a key forgetfulness brought? 
And who can limit the flight of a thought? 

Everywhere in this beautiful world, 

From night to night, and from dawn to dawn, 

Wherever I go, whatever I see, 

There is something to mind me that you are gone. 




// when we left a loved, or loving one, 

We knew that surely one of us would die 
Before another dawn, or set of sun, 

We Would not ever lightly say "Good-bye? 
And yet we know 
Some day it must be so. 



41 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



MY SHIPS HAVE COME FROM THE SEA 

You are watching a ship, Oh, maiden fair, 
With parted lips and wistful air. 
The ship that out from the sheltered bay 
With white sails spread moves slow away; 
And I know, my girl, the thoughts that burn 
In your heart are of that ship's return. 
Ah ! I know so well how your pulses beat, 
With the great sea sobbing at your feet; 
And the yellow stars in southern skies 
Are brighter not than your love-bright eyes. 

I, too, have stood on the sea-wet sand, 

And tearful waved a farewell hand, 

And watched with many a longing prayer. 

My face, like yours, was young and fair, 

And my eyes were bright as the diamond's glow, 

They've lost their sparkle long ago. 

I stand alone on the beach today, 

Watching the ships that sail away; 

But never a sail from over the sea 

The flowing tide will bring to me. 

My ships have come from sea. 

The first was builded with childish hand; 
It floated away a castle grand — 
A beautiful bubble with rainbow hues, 
Lined with the crystal of morning dews; 
To break at my feet by the sunny sea, 
A beautiful bubble came back to me — 
Came back from my ship at sea. 



42 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



I fashioned another in gladsome way 
And sent it forth on a summer day. 

I see it yet, a fairer craft, 
Never at danger mocking laughed; 
Its shrouds were the sheen of happy hours, 
Its helm a wreath of orange flowers. 
And I freighted it down with love and truth, 
The golden hopes of my sunny youth. 
Had it lived the storm — but it could not be, 
A stranded wreck on the surf-washed lea, 

My ship came home from sea. 

And then a smiling fairy bark, 
A fragile, precious-freighted ark, 
Out on life's ocean drear and dark. 
And I prayed to God as I never before, 
To shield this bark from the tempest's roar; 
To spare me this — but it could not be. 
A little coffin came back to me — 

Came back from my ship at sea. 

With reckless hand I launched again 
A venture on the treacherous main 
Bound for ambition's dizzy court, 
Sailed from a hopeless, loveless port. 
With gloomy walls whose silence chilled, 
With ghostly haunting memories filled, 
With never a breath of the roses dead ; 
Never a rest for a weary head, 
Never a dream of a sweet to be, 
Hopeless, loveless still, to me, 

My ship came home from sea. 



43 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



The last, and least, of all the ships 
Fashioned with hands, and heart, and lips, 
I pushed from shore with its decks untrod, 
And the freight it bore was my faith in God. 
I recked not whither its way, nor when, 
Nor how, if ever, 'twould come again. 
And this, alone, came back to me. 
Rich-laden from the stormy sea. 
And so, sweet maiden, while your dreams 
Paint fairest all that fairest seems, 
I stand with you and watch today 
The ship that sails from the shore away; 
But never a sail from over the sea 
The flowing tide will bring to me — 
My ships have come from sea. 



44 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 

BREAK DOWN THE DOOR OF THE 
JUBILEE 

Break down the door of the Jubilee, 
Let the penitent years file in, 
And with knees to earth in the sacristy 
Unshoulder their loads of sin. 
To your Jubilee ye hundred years, 
Your stoles are dabbled with blood and tears, 
Red, red with the wrongs of men — 
With the lust of men, and the trust of men; — 
With the gorge of gold, forsooth, 
And the hearts that broke 'neath its glittering- 
yoke 
In the marvelous faith of youth. 
Pass through, pass in, old years, and then 
Turn back and seal your door again. 

Break down the door, oh, thou white new year! 

Break down the door, "the Holy door," 

That never was struck by mace before, 

Brave priest, you have naught of sin nor fear. 

But pass you in in reverence prone — 

Lo ! Truth stands naked there, alone. — 

Look once, and die, for so it is writ. — 

But you've opened the door and out of it 

The light of her face will shine 

Till the morning stars shall sing again 

Of "Peace on earth, good will toward men." 



45 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



EASTER LILIES 

With eyes all dim and downcast, 
She stood at the foot of the cross, 

Bowing, in deep submission, 
Under the weight of her loss, 

And she held in her hand a lily, 
Close at the foot of the cross. 

A beautiful, perfect lily, 

To lay at the Savior's feet; 
Sign in her silent sorrow — 

Of her worship — passion sweet — 
A snowy, a sinless offering, 

To lay at the Savior's feet. 

"Behold thy mother and brethren !" 
A voice came up from the crowd 

To the ear of the dying Savior — 
The Savior murmuring aloud : 

"These are my mother and brethren !" 
Looked on the muttering crowd. 

And the mother's heart that was in her 
Swelled with a jealous fear, 

And down in the cup of the lily 
Dropped she a burning tear — 

Dropped on the snow of the lily 
The blot of a selfish fear. 

Dropped in the cup of the lily 
A tear that was hot with pain, 

And the snowy heart of the lily 
Was snowy never again. 

The wax-white heart had withered 
In the salt of its burning pain. 



46 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



And ever the beautiful lilies 

Are placed at the feet of the Lord. 

Baptized with the tear of a mother, 
Keep they, a sinless ward — 

Sign of a silent worship 
At the cross of the risen Lord. 

And ever and ever the lilies 
We lay with a smile or a tear, 

A sacred gift on the altar 

Of the idols we worship here, 

But deep in each lily's chalice 
Is the yellow stain of a tear. 



47 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE CHRISTMAS CROSS 

No longer red, its arms, with Christ's red blood. 
No longer bound with superstitions fears. — 
Self-slaved humanity has washed it in 

Two thousand years of tears. 
Strip it of creed, and ritual, and all 
Its mouth-made garmenture let fall 

As fashions that are old. 
On Calvary's summit let the mad world see 

God's sign of love, — and Christian liberty. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



GENESIS 

I came from the Unknowable. 

I was. 

I saw the first far reddening glimmer of the light 

Whose whirling fires begot the sun. 

And when this globe of earth swung darkling 

into space 
Through all its changing parentage of life, came I, 
Till man, evolved of me, awoke, walked forth 
And sunned his forehead in the smile of God. 
AJ1 things in him expressed, all things were his ; 
His the adjusting of the belted zones, 
The unmade centuries, the cradles, and the 

thrones. 

But failing recognition of me in himself, 
The red instinct of his four-footed time 
Strives with his higher element of life. 
His lust's desire his law of Right, he makes, 
His punier brother to the shambles takes, 
Himself of his own heritage himself despoils ; 
And warring with his soul he pawns his breath 
And passes back into the dust of death. 

And I? — I come again, again, 

Twice twenty times as many times again, I come ; 

And then, one day, a god is born. 
And many wonder at the marvel of his power, 
And bow to do him homage, crying "Hail! All 

Hail ! M 
Believing me a new thing yet beneath the sun. 
Or by a more ignoble impulse moved, they say: 
"A brand-new devil straight from hell is he." 
And in the sleeve of my flesh garmenture, I 

laugh,—- 
So old am I. 

For I am Love — the Atom of Creation, I. — 
I give each man his Christ to bless or crucify. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



A THOUGHT 

There's nothing dies; — the words you speak, 

The kiss you pressed upon a baby's cheek, 

The deeds you do, the thoughts you think, stamp 

all too surely on your face 
Their separate identities ; and leave in space 
A heritage for other souls to wear, — 
For other hearts to bear. 



A MOOD 

And so, dear dupe, you think that you 
By your own truth have kept him true? 
That moulded in such loyal mould 
Yourself, your thoughts can lift and hold 
Him to your loftier level? Then 
Christ had not need to die for men. 
Well, keep your noble thought, be true, 
And guard your ignorance. And pray — 
Pray God at night and dawn and day — 
The pain of wisdom may not come 
To you ; and strike you dumb ; and numb 
Your senses till they die; and you 
Have weariness of being true. 
Say wrong is right and let it go. 
And maybe you can make it so. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



ALL HALLOWE'EN 

A black cat sits on the back yard fence, 

And he yowls in the dead o' night ; 
There's a bat with wings stretched wide and tense 

Across the pale moonlight, 
A weird wind haunts the restless town, 

And ghosts walk up and down. 



UNDER THE GRASS 

And I must lie out there under the grass 

The wind ripples over the hill. 
In dewy green, or in dusty brown. 

Must lie there, and lie there, and lie there 
still 

When the winter rain beats down, 
And down, and into my slim white bones 

Dissolving the dust of me. 
And filtering through to the sun and the dew 

And the light of the stars, will pass 

Again to the roots of grass. 
And somebody, someday, will plant him a tree 
And a grape and a rose in the dust of me. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



BENDITA 

"If God were not so far away," she sighed, 
"To reach His lowest place, I might have tried. 
So high, so far from me His heaven lies, 
I may not toward it even lift my eyes," 

She said, 
And slowly, lowly, bent her head. 

Resigning all the glory of the skies, 
She turned to earth her sorrow-smitten eyes 
And sought its best, and made the best of all 
That chanced into her toiling hands to fall.— 
Nor thought of self, nor any chance that she 

might take, — 
But just to be a witness for His sake. 
Then waked one day amidst life's sudden stir 
To find the high and far-off God was leading her. 



/ wonder if ever the angel who holds 
The booJ^ where all secrets are hid, 

Writes for us the things we were trying to do, 
Or only the things that We did? 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 

TOASTS 

TO TRUTH 

The most beautiful naked thing in the world, 
And the most carefully clothed. 



TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN 

Were all love's joys, its smiles and kisses, 
Were all its hopes, and dreams, and blisses — 
All that a million years could think, — 
Imbrued into one cup of dew 
And given to me, a toast to drink, 
I'd drink that toast to you. 



TO CALIFORNIA 

Her breath is the purest, the wine of her mouth 

Is richer than Circe's of old, 
Her sandals are laced with the silk of the South, 

Her bosom is woven with gold. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



// / and you no more were said, 
And thee and me no longer read, 
The ego of all Being would be dead.- 
If thee and me no more were read, 
And I and thou no longer said. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



"TO YOU" 

When you return to your green hills 
And all the starry heavens shine, 
Or dawn your dusky canyon thrills 
To life again ; or may be when 
Its little rippling rivulets run 
To softest music in the sun, 
Or roars the wind in rougher rhyme, 
You'll think of me — just me — some time. 
In that dear moment pause, and then 
Let some sweet memory of me 
Have all your heart and constancy. 
And I will come to you that day 
Though I be half the world away. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



"DISTANCE IS CRUEL" 

vs. 
"DISTANCE IS KIND" 

"Distance is cruel/' cruel, you say, 
Was it distance that kept you away — 
Was it all distance? I say. 

The man who is thirsty, or hungry for bread, 
Does he count the miles to a feast? 
Or dally with time till his banquet is dead 
And many the miles have increased? 

Death came and took the light out of my heart, 

And stood by my bedside for me. 

I reached him my hands but he smiled and 

passed on, 
Death must be cruel some way. 

Grief came and found me 

And swathed her cloak round me 

And bound me a mummy from head unto feet, 

And trouble went double with sorrow 

Today, and tomorrow, and yesterday. 

Poverty laughed when I bolted my door, 

Stood by the door outside 

And laughed at my pitiful pride; 

Peeped through the keyhole and laughed 

Till he rattled the bones in his thin yellow skin. 

Aye ; they all came — a clamorous crew — 
Though each had been rover 
Ten times the round of the round earth over, 
But never, never came you. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



If "distance is cruel" is true, 

Then you who thus reasoned were cruelty's self, 

And distance was kinder than you. 

Out of the dimmers of distance 
One came to the desert to me. 
He kissed and caressed me and blessed me. 
O, his kisses were warm on my face, — 
My face was so cold. 

Over my graves in the desert 

He planted white blossoms of peace, 

And peace was surcease. 
My heart that was shriveled to die 
Grew large with the largeness of loving 
And the glory came back to the sky. 
Distance was lost in the spaces of places that 

make it, — 
And distance, I take it, is only the sieving of time. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



DEAD DAYS 

Do dead days ever more return — 
The ghosts of days, I mean, 

When incense smokes and candles burn 
With shrouded Love between? 

And if they do, come thou again, 
Touch palms with me, I pray, 

And turn the whole world back to Then,- 
Dear ghost of one dead day! 



WHEN WILL MY SOUL GO? 

O, when will my soul go — and where will it go? 

And what is my soul when it goes? 
Will it rise with the rain-clouds, and fall in the 
rain, 
And exhale from the heart of a rose? 
Who knows? 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



WHEN THE ROSES GO 

You tell me you love me, you bid me believe 
That never such lover could mean to deceive. 
You rave o'er my eyes, and my beautiful hair, 
And swear to be true; — as they always swear. — 
But the wrinkles will grow and the roses go, 
And lovers are rovers oft, you know, — 
When the roses go. 

I have heard of a woman sweet and fair, 
With lips of love, and shining hair, 
And you pledged to her on your bended knee 
The selfsame vows you make to me, 
But the wrinkles will grow and the roses go. 
How she learned that trouble comes, you know, — 
When the roses go. 

You hold my hand in your thrilling clasp, 
And my heart grows weak in your subtle grasp, 
Till I blush in the light of your tender eyes 
And dream of a far-off paradise. 
But the wrinkles will grow, and the roses go. 
1 will answer you, love — my love — you know, — 
When the roses go. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



PEARLIE IS GONE AWAY 

No papers, cut with the scissors, 

Scattered over the floor; 
No scampering feet on the stairway, 

No finger-marks on the door. 
How still and lonesome the house is, 

The sunshine looks paler today, 
And the wind round the corners is whispering: 

"Pearlie is gone away." 

There in the farthest corner 

Is her "sailor-hat" on the floor, 
Where she tossed it yesterday evening 

As she bounded in at the door. 
Somehow I couldn't take it 

And put it away today, 
And a plate of mud cakes in the cupboard, 

I couldn't throw them away. 

"Is she dead?" did you ask me? No, no! 

Could I sit here so calmly then? — 
Just gone on a visit. Some day 

She will come to me again. 
But the house is so still and so lonesome, 

And the sun shines so coldly today, 
And the wind round the corners keeps whis- 
pering: 

"Pearlie is gone away." 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



A PICTURE 

A little maid, with sweet brown eyes 

Upraised to mine in sad surprise ; 
I held two tiny hands in mine, 

I kissed the little maid farewell. 
Her cheeks to deeper crimson flushed, 

The sweet, shy glances downward fell ; 
From rosy lips came — ah ! so low — 

"I love you — do not go !" 

I see it through the lapse of years — 
This picture, oftimes blurred with tears. 
No tiny hands in mine are held, 

No sweet brown eyes my pulses wake- 
Only in memory a voice 

E'er bids me stay for love's sweet sake. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



TWO MUST BE TWO 

"They twain shall be one flesh," the Bible said; 
The minister with solemn words pronounced us 

one 
That long-ago, sweet hour when we were wed ; 

And I — I thought it had been done, — 

I thought that we were one. 

That he would hold my hand in his 

All our life's journey through — 
That we in deed and word and thought must be 

Each to the other true; 
Each to the other all that life desired 
Of love or of companionship of sex or soul, 
A unison of aim and hope and plan — 
No other woman in the world for him, 

For me no other man. 

One day — a strange and cruel day — he stopped 

And told me I must walk alone ; that two 

Were never one, nor ever could be one. 

And then I saw that near unto the path he trod 

There was another pathway, parallel, but soon 

Diverging. And it was not in the one 

Wherein he stood that he placed me. 

Far back along the way which we had come 

I saw a woman's tracks, made step by step 

In harmony with his; in sharp, swift agony I 

knew 
That they would go with his until the end, 
And never weary him ; for they were Friendship's 

tracks ; 
And Friendship walked in freedom by his side. 
In that cold, strange, new path, where he placed 

me — 
A burden lifted from his weary breast — 
Were many heaps of slender bleaching bones. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



The daylight fled; black night, without a star, 

Came down and shrouded me. 
I groped around, I tried to see, I tried to walk, 
But only stumbled over those cold, slender bones. 
Then all the souls of womanhood, that once 
Had habited those slim white bones, came near 
And tried to help me. But my feet were weak 
And heavy from long uselessness. My eyes 
Had learned to see but in Love's light, 
And from its cradle-time Love had been taught 

That in a woman's breast — 

"They twain shall be one flesh;" 
It never had been shown to walk alone, 

It could not even think alone. 

I sat down helpless where I was ; then all around 
I heard a shiver like the quivering of reeds 
Upon a river when the night-wind blows up 

stream, 
And from those heaps of bones there rose a cry, 
So strong, so deep and thousand-voiced and long, 

That all the darkness trembled. 
In its slow, shivering wail, I heard these words : 

"Why does the Holiest of Holies lie? 

Twain cannot be one flesh; 

Why is the sacredest of human ties 

Bound with such red mockery of Truth? 
Friendship hath only feet with which to climb — 
Yet climbs to heaven. Love hath both feet and 

wings, 
But Falsehood's swaddling bandages have made 

of her 
So frail a thing that man must carry her, 

Or set her down and let her die. 
Go back and tell thy sister woman not to love 
Till Love hath torn the bandage from her eyes 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



And learned the power of her wings, 
And taught her feet to walk as free and proudly all 

Life's way as Friendship walks. 
Go, go thou back, and tell to whom thou findest 
there 

That twain are not one flesh — 

That two shall not be one." 

I heard and bowed my head, and wept in won- 
derment, 
And wondering, I died. 
And there is one more heap of slim white bones 
For some one else to stumble over when 
To her, too suddenly, shall come the knowledge 
that 
Two must be two. 

Yet my lone soul, unsatisfied, 
Knows if there had been such another love as 

mine, 
And these had known and loved each other, 

Two had been one by law of Nature's self. 
There would no longer then have been the need 
Of any far-off Heaven, and death had ceased — 
Heaven would have come to dwell with them, 

And they for very joy could not have died. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



AN INWARD GLANCE 

Like waves of tides that higher reached than 
others went 
To meet the fulling moon's impellant light, 
And with their depth and force and purpose spent 
Left only foam to brown upon the hight, — 
So are my thoughts. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



IN A VISION 

Each was as fair as the other, 
And both, as my life, were dear, 

And the voices that lisped me "Mother," 
Heaven's music to my ear. 

One faded from life and mother, 

And died in a winter dawn, 
And I turned me away from the other 

And wept for the child that was gone. 

Then I lay in a wierd sleep vision, 
Before me an earth dark scene, 

And the land of the Sweet Elysian. — 
And only a grave between. 

One child soft called me "Mother"— 
Out from the shining door — 

And smiled and beckoned ; the other 
Played by itself on the floor. 

One's path, to my inward seeing, 
Was light with a wondrous day; — 

It led to the hights of Being, 
And an angel showed the way. 

The other lay where Marah's 

Hot sands with snares are strewn, 

Through many a darksome forest 
And the way was roughly hewn. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



A faith to my soul was given — 
The wierd sleep vision o'er — 

And I turned from the child in heaven 
To the child that played on the floor. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



CORONALS 

1 twined you a wreath of the ivy vine, 
You plucked me a red rose wet with dew — 

You hold in your hand, and I hold in mine 
Red rose ashes and bitter rue. 

Fortune's wheel turned round and round, 
And you went up and I went down. 

The chaplet of bay that your brow entwined 
You proudly wore ; — but I knew, I knew 

That you held in your hand, as I held in mine, 
Red rose ashes and bitter rue. 

You brought me a gift from the Avalon shores, 
I gave you the heart of a lily-blow; — 

I hold in my hand, and you hold in yours, 
A cypress wreath and ashes of snow. 

Fortune's wheel turned round and round, 
And I went up, and you went down. 

Of the sentient draught that flattery pours 
I have drained my meed — but you know, you 
know, 

That I hold in my hand, as you hold in yours, 
A cypress wreath and ashes of snow. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



INCONSISTENCE 

She gave me once a blood red rose and kissed 
My cheek. Contemptuously I met her touch 

And dropped the flower as though a serpent 
hissed 
Among its leaves. I blamed her much 

For some things which I knew ; nor thought that I 
Could less that smile if she should die. 

Today a wild flower white as snow I brought, 
And laid it on her breast ; and then I thought 
How mean it was to thrust a gift on her 
Who could not hand, or lip, or eyelid stir, 
To fling it back ; — and was it dew, — that clear 
Drop quivering on the blossom, — or a tear? 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



BUT ONE LITTLE STOCKING 

But one little stocking! There used to be two 
Hung up for the Christmas treasures; 

I dropped in a tear as I filled it anew — 
Too sad are the Christmas pleasures. 

O sainted, O sweet Mother Mary! 

For motherhood's blessing and dearth, 
Put a gift in the stocking in Heaven 

And say it's from mother on earth. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



MY SOUL AND I 

What were you, soul, before that you were I? 
Were you by death — some other form of death — 
Unburdened from some other shape, in some — 
Uncounted time (which I almost remember) 
A co-existent quantity with atoms of the stars, 
Or were you but a sigh of Nature's breath 
And had to have embodiment to make 
Death possible? 

O, passion bounded, sorrow tossed 

Poor Soul! 
What have you gained or what have you lost 

By wearing flesh's thrall? 
Enough to pay the troublous cost 
Of staying here — of coming here at all? 
And if you were a soul and knew you were 

Why hither journeyed you? 
Was there not in vast space a place 

More fitting for a soul? 

Poor Soul, 
If creeds are true, and you 
Were fashioned by the Mighty Maker's hand, 
In His own Image made, 
A thing unsullied as the Maker's self — 
White-winged with countless millioned happy 

years 
To sing His praises in, 

Why came you here to mix identities with me? 
To worry through the toil and moil of many years, 
To wash yourself in tears 
And die at last sore wounded, sullied, too, 
Your white wings clipped, just for the slender 

chance 
Of getting back to where and what you were. 
Poor Soul! 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE 

I never hear the night wind blow, 

Or see a red rose pearled with dew, 

Or hear a lark's song in the dawn 
But that I think of you, — 
Of you, hear heart, of you. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 

MY BROTHER 

(Leonard Morris Hilyard) 

Gone out into the darkness, and the night — 
Gone, gone alone, forever into the unknown — 
My Brother. 

Long nights and nights he waited for the dawn, 
And watched the sunlight glancing down the 

hills, 
Well-knowing he must go; but kept it closely in 

his breast, 
And hid his pain lest it should fright us that he 

loved. 
And then one day he smiled, and went away — 
My Brother. 

Say not that he is dead and lives not anywhere 

That potent individuality, 

Nor in some far-off other world awaits 

The Everlasting, — all forgetting this. 

No morning dawns, or sun goes down, or rain 

or wind, 
Or war of elements, or summer stillness comes, 
But that I see his face — 
My Brother. 

O, there are hurts too deep for words. 

And there are silent rooms in memory 

Whose emptiness would break our hearts again 

To venture in. 

Rest unto thee, and peace, and blessedness, and 

love ; Amen ! 
There was no braver, kinglier-hearted man than 

thou — 

My Brother. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE FAIRY OF THE HEIGHTS 

She's the winsomest fairy, with bonnie brown 

eyes 
That twinkle so merrily, then look so wise. 
Each hair of her head in the sunshine was 

traced, 
It's the vividest gold from her crown to her 

waist — 
Never troubled with tie strings of bonnet or hat. 
And the speckled fawn looks from his browse in 

the flat, 
To wonder what manner of comrade is that 
With a brown little hand reached to give him a 

pat. 
She is friends with the squirrels and birds, and 

she knows 
Where the shy rabbit hides, and the Christinas 

tree grows. 

She sits where the spring ripples over its brink, 
And watches the bees and/ the butterflies drink. 
She puts her ear close to the old redwood tree 
To hear what it says to the wind from the sea ; 
She could tell you its tale of a shepherd and 

staff— 
The redwood's four thousand, — she's nine and a 

half. 
She will point out the spot where the full moon 

first spills 
Its flood of pure silver to burnish the hills, 
For she's friends with the squirrels and birds 

and she knows 
Where the shy rabbit hides and the Christmas 

tree grows. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



VALENTINE 

All night at your heart's door my heart had stood, 
But did not knock (you might have let me in, 

And that, before the world's tribunal, would 
Have been a sin). 

From out the somewhere world of dreams, my 
soul 
Saw yours come back into its sleeping clay; 
Then out into the new-born dawn, I stole 
And went away. 

It was a soul your waking eyes first saw, and so 
How could you know ! 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



NOT ACCLIMATED 

I hate you, Southland of the southern west, 
I say I hate you ! All your hot brown breast 
Is dried and shrivelled up. Your wide hot mouth 
Breathes only scorching desolating drouth. 
Your mountains toss their jagged peaks, and stop 
Just short of majesty. Your rivers drop 
Beneath the sands of their own beds, and seep 
Through mud and roots and rotted things, and 

creep 
Like cowards to the sea. I say I hate you ! 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



QUESTION 

Shall I, because you stabbed me in the back 

And killed my friendship with a traitor's blow, 
Shall I behind your armor strike, and show 
Myself a traitor too, 
To even things with you? 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



I HAVE NEVER, YOU THINK, A SERIOUS 
THOUGHT 

I have never, you think, a serious thought, 

My friend — 
Never a moment by sorrow taught 

Its sympathy to lend. 
Can you by the light of laughing eyes 
See all there is in the heart that lies 

Under a smile, my friend ? 

Forever wrapped in their glittering shrouds 

Of snow, 
Are the mountain peaks that touch the clouds ; 

But ah, my friend, you know 
There are smoldering fires that never rest, 
And earthquakes hid in the mountain's breast, 

Under the cold, white snow. 



UNANSWERED 

O dear, dear, eyes, now shut to sight and sense, 
White folded hands, at rest for evermore, 

Can you not give me back one look from thence? 
Nor open once, just once, that silent door? 

If I could have one glimpse beyond it given, 
To know you live, and love, and blame me not; 

My mad, mad soul would give its hopes of heaven, 
And die, and be forgot. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



QUERY 

It is so precious sweet to be a fool, 
A pretty little petted simpleton, 
And let the great big fellow you have won 
Believe that he is captor, and his rule 
Imperative, while round your finger tips 
You wind him with a smile or pout of lips. 
Who would be large and wise, and boastful rule, 
When it's so "cute" to be a "little fool?" 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE RED WINDS BLOW 

The red winds blew around the world. 

The gaunt wolf rose, and sniffed, pricked forward 

pointed ears; 
The vulture sharped her beak; Death held his 

breath ! 
And dissonantly twanged the music of the 
spheres. 

The red winds blew. The nations stirred un- 
easily, 

As when a loitering zephyr ruffles summer leaves, 

Then swift, and sudden as the gathered tempest 
strikes, 

Ten times a million men rushed at each other's 
throats 

And drenched the fair earth with each other's 
blood. 

Ten times a million Christian men, with songs 
of home 

Upon their tongues; each praying to the self- 
same God 

For strength to slay, and slay, and kill and kill 

His brother men across the reeking trenches, till 

No man was left to lift a hand opposing him. 
For what? and how? and why? and why? 

To claim a city by another claimed, mayhap? 

To step across a line marked on a map? 

For greed of place? For power to rule ^God's 
unmarked seas? 
Or this? or this? or that? or that? or these? 

The tramp of armies shakes the smiling lands. 

Such armies ! God of Hosts, till now, Thou hast 
not seen. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



Death rides before them with red dripping hands ; 
The roar of breaking- worlds their bodeful coming 

tells ; 
The bare earth moans where grew sweet fields of 

gold and green. 
The carrion eater slinks close in their shadow's 

hem, 
And Famine, stark and hungry-eyed, stalks after 

them. 

The red winds blow. 

Whose sons are these that sail the skies in winged 

ships, 
And hurl down from the blue of heaven, hot, 

hideous death, 
To break upon the lullabies of sleepy babes; 
To burst amidst the fleeing multitudes, 
Rend limbs from limbs, tear quivering flesh from 

shrieking bones, 
And in High Places thank God for the gruesome 

crime ? 
Whose sons are they that plant the seas with 

death? 
Foul, awful death; that lies in wait for human 

prey, 
Laughs when the lordly dreadnought glides too 

near 
(Itself in search of other human prey), 
And springs annihilation in a breath ! 
Leaving, of all the splendid armament's defense, 
But streaks of crimson scum upon the broadening 

waves. 

The red winds blow. 



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Whose sons are they, made in Thy image, Thou, 

O God! 
Not Thine? Not brothers of Thy Son, Whose 

way 
Was gentleness; Whose touch was benediction. 

Nay; 

Not Thine, not Thine! 
Nor thine, thou carnate devil, watching from 

thy hell, 
The hell that out-hells thine ! In thy unholiest 

dreams 
Thou could'st not have devised the 'cursed 

schemes 
For human woes, and horrors, these have done. 
Thou art outstripped in cunning — out of date — 
Too old of fashion. Slip back in thy spuny hell, 
They are not thine. 

Down through the ages they have come; 
Red souls of war, obsessioning the earth, — 
They were the miscreated sons of her who sat 
Upon the seven-headed scarlet colored beast 
Which sat upon the waters of the Seven Seas. 
To whom the kings of earth came craftily, 
And drank abomination from her gilded cup. 
Her smile preceded Babylon, 
And on her brow was written "Mystery." 
The red winds blow. 



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And Thou, O gentlest Peace, in what far guarded 

place 
Dost hide and hide the pity of thy face? 
Let loose thy snow-winged dove, to rise 
And fly across the seething blood-mad world. 
To flutter over fields where that dread Silence is ! 
To light on upturned faces blearing at the skies 
And curiously peck at dead men's eyes. 
The red winds blow. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



A PEACE CONFERENCE 

Once the great white bear of Russia, 

Close beside his polar seas, 
Called the beasts and birds to counsel 

That the beasts and birds would please 
Cease to war upon each other; 

Appetite for blood should cease, 
And all sovereignty be given 

To the sweet, white dove of Peace. 

The great bald eagle from his aerie 

On the mighty Rockies' crest, 
Lauded peace while he was preening 

Blood of battle from his breast. 

Royally the Albion lion 

Licked and licked his velvet paws, 
Roaring Peace to Afric jungles 

With blood and feathers on his claws. 

Came the great black-breasted eagle 
Swooping from the Baltic's shore. 

Bait for fish in Orient waters 
In his peaceful talons bore. 

Then the great white bear of Russia 
Asked all beaks and claws to sheath; 

Asked, and smiled, and showed in smiling, 
His own cub's blood upon his teeth. 

Far away upon her desert 

In her solitude enthroned, 
Peace sat desolate and weeping — 

And her white dove moaned and moaned. 
Slowly, through the hot sun toiling, 

An aged worm with ways infirm, 
Stopped its homeward crawl to listen; 

And the white dove ate the worm. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



INTUITION 

I kissed her eyes and cheeks, and then 
I told her I would come again. 
I told her I would come, and then 
I kissed her eyes and cheeks again. 

Coat falsehood over thick with wit, 
Wrap reasoning round it — yards of it — 
And there are eyes will pierce it through 
And smile your falsehood back at you. 

I fancy she was one of these, 
For though I swore by shores and seas, — 
Aye ; though my vows in heaven I booked- 
She looked at me — just looked and looked. 

Some minds toil hard, up-hill and far 
To find the truth, but some there 
Who feel the truth within them grow 
And know, — not knowing how they know. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



CALIFORNIA 

She was not born a babe, to suckle strength; 

A woman, gazing down her land's broad length, 

Stepped from the pines out on the fall-brown grass;- 

The grizzly bear stood bad? to let her pass. 

And Fremont's cannon thundered wide and far, 

Old Glory s azure had another star. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poernj3 

THE OPENING OF THE CALIFORNIA 
POPPIES 

To the West, and below where the snow summit 

looms, 
Stood an army of pike-pointed lances of green, 
So slenderly fashioned they scarce could be seen. 
How could they, such lilliput lances of green? 
The plains and the foothills were spotted all over 
With pieds of blue camas, and tall lupin plumes 
In reaches of purple ; 
And blushes of bloom of the clover. 
And smelled sweet as bee-bread. 
But the meadow lark laughed in his ripple of tune, 
The meadow lark knew what would happen at 

noon. 
There were stamens of gold and petals of flame 
Wrapped up in each green little conical cap, 
That slowly slipped up, and slipped up, till it came 
Off at the top with a snap ! 

And the petals unrolled, flame, orange, and gold, 
And airily, fairily, swung on the stem, 
Till the land was afire with the color of them. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE GOLDEN GATE 

Down by the side of the Golden Gate 

The city stands; 
Grimly, and solemn, and silent, wait 

The walls of land 
Guarding its door, as a treasure fond; 
And none may pass to the sea beyond, 
But they who trust to the king of fate, 

And pass through the Golden Gate. 
The ships go out through its narrow door, 
White-sailed, and laden with precious store — 
White-sailed, and laden with precious freight, 
The ships come back through the Golden Gate. 
The sun comes up o'er the Eastern crest, 
The sun goes down in the golden West, 
And the East is West, and the West is East, 
And the sun from his toil of day released, 

Shines back through the Golden Gate. 

Down by the side of the Golden Gate — 

The door of life, — 
Are resting our cities, sea-embowered, 
White-walled, and templed, and marble-towered — 

The end of strife. 
The ships have sailed from the silent walls, 
And over their sailing the darkness falls. 
O, the sea is so dark, and so deep, and wide ! 
Will the ships come back from the further side? 
"Nay; but there is no further side," 
A voice is whispering across the tide, — 
"Time, itself, is a circle vast, 
Building the future out of the past,' 
For the new is old, and the old is new, 
And the true is false, and the false is true, 
And the West is East, and the East is West, 
And the sun that rose o'er the Eastern crest, 
Gone down in the West of his circling track 
Forever, and ever, is shining back 

Through the Golden Gate of life." 

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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



O soul ! thy city is standing down 

By its Golden Gate; 
Over it hangs the menacing frown 

Of the king of fate. 
The sea of knowledge so near its door, 
Is rolling away to the further shore — 

The Orient side, — 
And the ocean is dark, and £eep, and wide! 
But thy harbor, O Soul ! is filled with sails, 
Freighted with messages, wonder tales, 
From the lands that swing in the sapphire sky. 
Where the gardens of God in the ether lie. 
If only thy blinded eyes could see, 
If only thy deaf-mute heart could hear, 
The ocean of knowledge is open to thee, 
And its Golden Gate is near! 
For the dead are the living, — the living the dead, 
And out of the darkness the light is shed; 
And the East is West, and the West is East, 
And the sun from his toil of day released, 

Shines back through the Golden Gate. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



TO CLARA SHORTRIDGE FOLTZ 

From out the ranks of them that toil 
Thy hand has carved its upward way, 

Nor stooped its God-given trust to soil, 
Nor dreamed in weariness to stay. 

If faltered e'er that heart of thine, 

It ached, but gave the world no sign. 

Thy voice has argued in debate, — 

In scathing satire sharply fell ; 
In forum and in hall of state 

Held listening thousands with its spell. 
Then dropped its tones to softest keep 
And crooning sang a babe to sleep. 

True as the ship is to its port, 

Thy heart — on seas of sun or foam — 

Wrought out its masonry in Court, 
But built its tower at home. 

And when the gold upon thy head 
Shall change to age's colder gray, 

The little hands that thou hast led 

Will lead thee down life's slanting way. 

The path is long since over-grown 

With flowers of love that thou hast sown. 

Then Hail thee! priestess of the law — 
Our fair-browed Portia of the West. 

Write on thy shield : "I came, I saw, 

I conquered." Thou hast earned the crest. 

Nay; more, it seemed the gods to thee 

Had given the Sakhral's mystery. 

And thou hast proved that woman can — 
Who has the grace, and strength, and will — 

Work in the wider field of man 
And be a glorious woman, still. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



MOUNT WHITNEY 

Stern sentinel of Pacific's broad embrace 

Thou standest drear and lone; 
The sun's first glance falls on thy snowy face, 

Thou hear'st the ocean's moan. 
With foreheads bared the hills enclose thee round ; 

Winds woo thee o'er in storm and zephyr sweet, 
And summer, with her girdle loosely bound 

Like some fair Ruth, lies blushing at they feet. 
No bird on thy bleak summit seeks its rest; 

No flower e'er blossoms on thy chilling breast. 
The nations rise, and die, and rise again, 

And still thou standest lone, and drear, and cold, 
Immovable, unchangeable as when 

The first-born century above thee rolled. 
Thy vigil keep, O Mount, till on the brink 
Of Chaos Time shall break his flight. 
Wrapped in thy solitary grandeur sink 

Like lost Atlantis, in thy might. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



WELCOMING THE G. A. R. TO 
CALIFORNIA 

Run up the flag to its highest height 

And proudly let it wave 
Upon the sunset's wall of light 

To greet the true and brave. 

There is never a stripe on its crinkling folds 

Nor a star its field to gem 
With the vaunted glory victory holds, 

But owes its place to them. 

Bring out again the unlimbered guns, 

And sound the bugle call ; 
With roll of drums and martial pride 

Salute them comrades all. 

Ah ! They have another welcome heard, 

And another scene have they ; 
Their flags are battle-dimmed and torn, 

Their guns had fiercer play. 

There are empty sleeves, and stumping limbs, 
There are wounds that never sleep ; 

And the memories of lonesome graves 
Where nightshade blossoms weep. 

Oh, many a soldier's cheek will pale 
Whose heart ne'er beat with fear; 

Oh, many a comrade is "marking time," 
Who cannot answer "Here!" 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



And day on day of the flying years, 
In the ranks grow wider gaps 

As down the lines in the camp of life 
Old Death is sounding "Taps." 

Run up the flag to its highest height, 

And proudly let it wave, 
Upon the sunset's wall of light 

To greet the true and brave. 



93 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



SAN FRANCISCO* 

Upon her thrice seven smiling hills she stood, 

Beloved of her patron guide, the good 

St. Francis; with pomp and power and pleasure 

rife. 
Richer than Tyre and Sidon was her broad estate, 
Fair as Mohamet's dream of after-life; — 
Secure, behind her battlemented Golden Gate. 
And Dawn slipped down and blessed the sleeping- 
world. 
But that unwonted silence, everywhere ! 
No twitter of a bird in matinal was there, 
The dog cowered whimpering at his master's 

door; 
The fishes swimming seaward from the shore. 
Then suddenly awakened, all uphurled 
Were tower, and dome, and splendid palace wall ; 
The sick earth reeled and shrank; shock followed 

shock 
Till splintered timbers, dust and tumbling rock 
Piled the great city's crumpling streets, and all 
Her mighty architecture swayed and groaned 
With crunch of wrenching beams, and screak and 

screech 
Of twisted steel. And pallid faces, blank of 

speech, 
Turned helpless to the awesome reddening sky. 
From nowhere unto nowhere rumbling moaned 
The earthquake's passing sigh. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



"Is this the end? This — this our final lot?" 
Men looked into each other's eyes and answered 

not. 
And then above the tumult rose a doom more 

dread; 
A thousand sheets of flame leaped up as one ; — 
The demons from the under earth had spread 
Their holocaust to greet the rising sun. 
And upward from its terror, and despair, 
The smoke of Sacrifice pulsed in the smitten air, 
Devouring, roaring, miles of blazing death ; — 
A kingdom devastated in a breath. 
All day the Queen of Evil laughed, and urged 
Her fire sons to fiercer rage; all day, all night, 
That billowing wall of fire swirled and surged, 
And lit far other places with its lurid light. 
Men fought it back as gods might fight with 

Titan foes, 
Fought hand to hand, fought face to face, and 

fell 
Unconquered, lying where they fell. And none 

may tell 
The heroisms of that time, — and for no man 

knows. 

* In the great earthquake and fire of April, 1906. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



A LEGEND OF SUTRO HEIGHTS 

Once when the world was new, 

Once in its dawns and springs, 
When the waters a language knew, 

And the hills were living things, 
The Mount that is Tamalpais 

And this terrace-bordered Hight, 
Stood side by side in the wall of land 

Which held the seas aright. 

And the Mount and the Hight were lovers, 

In love with the sea were they, — 
In love with the syren Ocean 

Whose beauty before them lay; 
Her emerald gown was broidered 

With lace the mermaids spun, 
And her tawny bosom glittered 

With the diamonds of the sun. 

They gazed on the matchless vista — 
On the wide-out-sweeping zone 

Of amber-dappled Ocean, 

And they claimed her each his own. 

A quarrel grew between them, 
And the contest rose and raged 

Till the universe was shaken 

With the jealous war they waged . 

All vain the angered Ocean 

Invoked each nymph and gnome, 

And beat her breast against them, 
And flung her arms of foam. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



The sun and the moon drew backward 
And hid in their clouded light, 

And the pale stars fled affrighted 
Back into the aisles of night. 

Then the king of the hills and the waters 

Arose in his wrathful might, 
And kindled his red death-furnace 

Under the Mount, and the Hight — 
The sea-waves stop and tremble, 

The hills like waves careen — 
And the wall was rent asunder, 

And the Ocean rushed between. 

The king of the hills and the waters 

Still stood in his wrathful might, 
And he hurled his curse prophetic 

On the riven Mount and Hight: 
"Ye shall stand thus widely parted 

While the sea-waves wash the shore, 
And hear the ocean moaning 

For ever, ever more; 
And thou, rebellious Mountain, 

Be a barren waste and dumb 
Till the world shall bring you ransom, 

Till the East to the West shall come." 

The circling years whirled onward, 

The birds forgot to sing 
On the barren, nameless summit 

Under the ban of the king. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



One day from the dust and tumult, 

From the cares, and frets and ills, 
Where standeth the busy city 

On its ocean-dented hills, 
Came one and stood on the Mountain — 

On the Mountain cursed of fate. 
He looked on the broad Pacific, 

On the narrow-bounded strait; 
He saw old Tamalpais, 

Black-browed as the frown of hate; 
He saw the ships of the nations 

Come into the Golden Gate. 

And the humbled soul of the Mountain 
Crept into the soul of the man, 

Swift in his brain evolving 
The lines of a mighty plan. 

He wove him a wondrous vision ; 

Of the desolate land he made 
A flower-wreathed dome of beauty, — 

A sylvan perfumed shade. 

He planted the snow pale flowers 
And the blooms of tropic dye, 

And a giant redwood forest 

Held its arms up toward the sky. 

The rare and the quaint and the curious 
Of the world he hither brought, 

And the wonder-shapes in sculpture 
Which the master hands had wrought. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



And he builded here a temple 

To the muses Time has sung, 
Full-stored with the hoarded volumes 

Of many a clime and tongue, 
Where the scholar's hand might gather 

From the past its fading gleams, 
And the poet's fancy fashion 

The thought in his realm of dreams. 

And his templed palace garden, 
With a royal generous hand, 

He gave — a gift — to the people 
Of the Golden Western land. 

From the ocean's lambent splendor, 
From his vision-bowered strand, 

He turned to the rock-ribbed summit 
And the glaring dunes of sand. 

He had forced the earth to open 

Her secret treasure door — 
And back to the earth he yielded 

Her gold thrice doubled o'er. 

The jagged rocks are shapen, 

To curious curving walls, 
To granite carven stairways 

And terrace-circled halls. 

And curve in curve encloses 
Long flower embroidered lines, 

Where mythic gods and graces 
Dream under palms and pines ; 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



Where the ministers of winter 

Sleep in acacian bowers, 
Drugged with the breath of incense 

From purple-throated flowers. 

The west wind whispers, whispers, 

Its story in the nights, 
And the Ocean chants her anthem 

At the foot of Sutro Hights. 

The humbled soul of the Mountain 
Liveth no longer dumb — 

The world has brought its ransome, 
The East to the West has come. 



100 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



HELEN HUNT JACKSON 

Proud California! Bend thy head, 

And measure, reverently, thy tread; 

And plant thy tallest pine to wave 
Above the gentle stranger's grave. 

******* 

A rose dropped down into the sea, 

And drowned ; — 
But every wave that washed a lea, 

Or swept the ocean round, 
Came back and brought upon its crest 
A sweetness from the rose's breast. 

A song bird on the summit crown 

Of self-denied, 
Fell slowly fluttering, fluttering down, 

And died; — 
But all the hills and valleys rang 
With music of the songs it sang. 

A woman's soul has crossed the size 

Of mortal sight — 
A woman's hands, a woman's eyes 

Are closed in night; — 
But all along the way she came 
Are springing blessings on her name. 

O rose ! O bird ! O woman's heart ! 

Dead heart — dead flower — and silent bird,- 
Ye gave us but the fainter part 

■Of songs ye heard: 
The solemn nights have sung to thee, — 
The trees, and winds and moaning sea; 
The mighty silences of space 
Closed round and taught thee face to face ! 
No land may claim thee to enshrine, 
Thou art the world's — the world was thine. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



IN THE FOOTHILLS OF THE SIERRAS 

The pine trees nod to the oaks below, 

The wild oats bend to the cliffs of snow; 

Noonday's shimmering, gauzy glow 

On all the hills is lying — 

And the manzanita berries grow 

Red in its gorgeous dyeing. 

The wood-dove answers the plaintive call 

From the nest that is hid in the chemesal, 

And the wanton humming bird devours 

His feast from the bulky milk-weed flowers. 

Threads of cobwebs, glistening gray, 

Spun on the wheels of the summer's day, 

Glimmering go — and glimmering stay — 

A place to dream one's life away. 

And the saucy stream goes tumbling down 

To water the flowers in a valley town. 



102 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE WHEAT OF SAN JOAQUIN 

A thousand rustling yellow miles of wheat, 

Gold-ripened in the sun, in one 

Vast fenceless field. The hot June pours its flood 

Of flaming splendor down, and burns 

The field into such yellowness that it 

Is gold of Nature's alchemy; and all 

The mighty length and breadth of valley glows 

With ripeness. 

Then a rolling of machinery, 
And tramp of horse and scream of steam 
And swishing sighs of falling grain, 
And sweaty brows of men; and then — ■ 
The Samson of the valleys lieth shorn. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THANKSGIVING AT MONTARA 

Thanksgiving dawn God's secrets told 
In misty lines of pink and gold 

Upon your hills, Montara. 
The lark, while yet the dawn was dim, 
Sang joyously her praise to Him. 
Sweet peas that climbed the windy wall 
Shook down their fragrance unto all. 
Wee wild things felt the shadows pass, 
And heard the growing of the grass. 
And lo ! Thanksgiving left, that night, 
The afterglow of God's own light 

Upon your hills, Montara. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 

THEY ALL ARE KIN TO YOU 

(Ina Coolbrith) 

The twilight, and the dawn, 

Sunrise and set of sun — 
The summer's golden hush, 

All seasons — all in one — 
Belong to you. 

The rose her secret whispers you 

The poppy's dreams, you know, 

To you, the mystery of the seas 

The West winds blow, and blow, — 
They all are kin to you. 

And that is why you sit alone 
Just at the great sea's door, 
And watch, and watch the tides come in, 
And watch, and watch the tides go out — 
And the white ships ever more, — 
They all are kin to you. 



105 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



AT SAN DIEGO 

Here first on California's soil, 

Cabrillo walked the lonesome sands; 

Here first the Christian standard rose 
Upon the sea-washed Western lands, 

And Junipero Serra first 
Laid loving hands. 

What saw they here, that venturous band, 
To bless or touch with loving hand? 
Or bid them pause, or dream to stay 
Around this silent, sleeping bay? 

An acreage of many miles, 

Vast miles of sun-burnt naked space, 
Red, brown, and bare, and baked as tiles ; 

Whose surface lay unchanged of face 
As it had lain, the hills among, 
Since first Creation's psalm was sung; 
Whose people watched the squirrels play, 
And cared not any more than they. 

Not these alone, the fathers saw 

Not these made hardships doubly sweet — 
He never sees his arrow's flight 

Who is always looking at his feet; — 
Those holy fathers, wiser they, 

They marked the broad expanse of plains, 
And mountains gushing crystal life 

Enough to fill its thirsting veins ; — 
They saw, far off, the mingled weft 

Of colors wrought from out the soil, 
When Nature rounds upon her loom 

The laborer's legacy of toil. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



They served, and toiled, and built, and 
But ever saw a promised land; [planned, 
And heard its slowly rising swells 
Ring joyous from their mission bells. 

And decades passed, and fifty years, 

A century was born and died; 
A nation struggled into birth, 

And rose to midday of its pride. 
And freedom's war-wet staff was set 

Beside that one of love and peace ; 
And suns of noons, and midnight moons, 

Unwove and wove time's ageless fleece. 
Time crept by the mission bells, 

And back, and tied their tongues with rust ; 
And touched the eye-lids of the priest, 

And garmented his bones with dust. 

The glory of the mission passed, 
Its gloom its glory overcast. 
Within its corners, shadow-walled, 
The bats made nest ; the lizard crawled 
Upon the sunny side to sit, 
With soulless eyes, and laugh at it. 

But smile not ye with scornful lips, 

Nor croak a prophecy of this ; 
There's nothing lost that's lost, and naught 

That once has lived, has lived amiss. 
Nay, smile not ye, nor count that false 

Which failed in promises it gave ; 
For gold is gold, though it go down 

A thousand fathoms in the wave; 
And brighter-hued the blossom is 

That blooms upon a grave. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



In silence sleeps the land no more, 
Its treasury of wealth is found ; 

And all its curving seagirt shore 
With queenly cities crowned; 

While through its gateway come and go 
The sails of suns and sails of snow. 

Progress to this old new West 

Has turned her face and set her seal ; 
Has bound the waters, broke the hills, 

And shod the desert sands with steel. 
O land of sun, — hot, splendid sun! — 

Of sea-cool winds, and Southern moons!- 
Of days of calm, and nights of balm, 

And languorous, dreamy noons. 
No seer hath need to tell for thee, 

Thy daring and thy destiny. 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE LAST PRIESTESS OF THE SUN 

Backward-gazing on her ruined temple 

The Priestess stands, 
Fierce, and wondering, and sullen, gazes 
On the desecration of the spoilers' hands. 
Dead are the fires upon your altar, maiden, 
Despoiled of all its richess is your shrine; 
Your sacred sacrificial vessel gives you 

No answering sign. 
And palms will grow upon your temple 

And still the sun will shine. [border, 



THE BUILDERS 

Ye builders coming late unto the Aztec's Sea — 
Unto the sun-land Southwest of the West, 

Hail to you, hail ! Your temples solemnized today 
Disturb no dead world's rest. 

Thrice hail to you ! Ye builders by the Aztec's Sea ; 
Twin fold the blessings of your work in stone and 

wood, — 
Who helps to make the world more beautiful 
Helps God to make it good. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE NATIVE DAUGHTERS OF THE 
GOLDEN WEST. 

When California wrought her royal crown of 

gold— 
The perfectness where in her own proud fame 

should rest — 
She took the foot-prints of the pioneers, 
She took the sound of battle, and the strength 
Of manhood measured by the long-drawn length 
Misfortune stretched for them across the 

years. 
She took the whispering sighs of pines that 

shake 
Their needles down on graves lost in the wake 
Of time. She took the heart-sick patience and 

the tears 
Of women waiting, waiting, waiting, for their 

loved 
Who came not back. And then, the sacredness 
And permanency of her state-hood laid 
Upon this shrine of sacred things. Of these she 

made 
Her crown; and wrote around its shining 

crest: 
"My Native Daughter of the Golden West." 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



WONDERFUL, MYSTERIOUS MEXICO 

Builded on the ruins of dead thrones 

Whose temple walls were old when Thebes 
was new; 

On altars whose weird sacrificial stones 

With ghastly offerings were crimsoned through. 

Oblivion hides and holds thy secrets fast — 

The dust of ages lies upon thy past, 
All wonderful, mysterious Mexico. 

The conquerors came knocking at thy peaceful 
door 
And met thy outstretched hands with sword 
and flame; 
With broken gods bestrewed thy altar floor, 

And slew thee in Christ's loving, gentle name. 
But thy bold eagle clutched a serpent in the 

slipping sand, 
And bore it writhing o'er his blood-swept land, 
All wonderful, mysterious Mexico. 

Thou land of shrines and crosses, legends, yester- 
days ; 
From tropic splendor to eternal snow, 
Thy purple mountains rim such unfound ways 
Of wealth, the greedy world turns hither to thy 
slow 
Awakening; to lay swift hands upon the treasured 
worth 
Thy solemn hills and hotland jungles hold — 
Why, thou couldst change the commerce of the 
earth, 
And fill the coffers of the world with gold ; 
Thou wonderful, awakening Mexico. 



Ill 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 

ALASKA'S WOMAN 

(Mrs. Mary E. Hart) 

Don't you hear the icy winter calling you? 
The far voice of your fierce snow-blinding solemn 

North ? 
Your midnight sun turns one dim edge above 

the snow. 

At Kotzebue it's "54 below." 

The mighty Yukon's roaring protest shakes the 

crouching hills, 
In vain attempts to burst the icy barrier closing 

down 
Upon its breast. Aurora Borealis shoots across 

the sky 
Red searchlights of her miracle, 
And all the heaven with flaming splendor fills. 

The tundra crackles for your mucklucks'* tread. 
Your parkaf hangs beseeching on your cabin 
That far north cabin wall [wall, — 

(A timber wolf housed with her young ones there 

last fall). 
Your huskies^ snap their teeth impatiently, 
And lurch against the traces to be gone. 
The sleety blizzard bellows forth its challenge, — 

daring you to come. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



And still the sunland holds you. I am knocking 
at your door; 

The perfume of your flowers besets me as I knock. 

You have grown indolent with too much shelter- 
ing ease, 

You could not hear the wild North call midst all 
of these. 

Your neighbor leans across the fence to speak 
to me — ■ 

"Left for Alaska more 'n a month ago?" — What? 
you don't say! 

Well that's quite like her. Thank you Mrs. 

er-er-'much obliged. Good-day. 

* Fur boots with tops of knee or thigh length. 

t A hooded fur shirt, — an Alaskan outer garment 
reaching to the knees, worn by men, women and 
children. 

X A breed of native Alaskan dogs. 



113 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



What know you of my Souls inherent strife 
By that calm faith — untried — which wells in thine- 

How can you from the knowledge of your life, 
Write out a creed for mine? 



114 



Songs That Have Been Set To Music 



The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



LOVE'S WAY 

Love came to my window and tapped one day, 
Touched hands and touched lips, and went flying 

away ; — 
For Love is like that alway, and alway — 
Love is like that alway. 

The world went all wintry, sad years passed, and 

then 
Love rested his wings at my window again; 
1 clasped him, and held him so close to my heart 
I thought he would never, could never, depart. 
But Love slipped his light wings and went flying 

away, 
For Love is like that alway and alway — ■ 
Love is like that alway. 

Once more Love came smiling and whispering 

to me, 
But I said to him : "Love, pretty Love, don't 

you see 
The window is barred, dear, between you and 

me?" 
And Love folded his wings at my window to stay. 
For Love is like that alway, and alway — 
Love is like that alway. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 

GOD BLESS YOU WHEREVER YOU ARE 

The twilight was lonesome, — was eerie, 
The heavens showed but one little star; 

We parted in silence, my dearie, — 
God bless you wherever you are. 

Wherever your footsteps are straying, — 
Anear me, or wandering afar, — 

Remember I'm saying, I'm praying: 
"God bless you ! wherever you are." 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE DRYADS 

O, I was a dryad, and you were a dryad, 

In the long and long ago! 
And so when the leaves in the wild-wood are 
whispering, 

And the trees wide shadows throw, 

I can hear you calling me 

In the way it used to be ; 

And I know as we used to know, 
When I was a dryad and you were a dryad 

In the long and long ago. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THE SIGN OF THE CROSS 

"What will you give me?" I asked him — 

My lover of long ago. 
"What shall I keep to remember 

That ever you loved me so?" 
"Dearest one," softly he answered, 

"We have sifted life's gold and its dross,- 
That you may not forget how I loved you 

I'll make you the sign of the Cross." 

As light as the touch of the zephyr 

That blows in the nights of the South, 
With my face in his hands he kissed me 

On forehead and eyes and mouth. 
O, I might forget that he loved me, 

Forget, too, the pain of my loss, 
But deep in my heart, and forever, 

Is burning his sign of the Cross. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



THAT DAY IN TEXAS 

The gulf blew its gentlest breeze — 
The whisperings of some far seas, 
The sunshine flamed across the land, 
I felt the warm clasp of your hand 
And Oh, the light in your dar eyes 
Was brighter than the sunlit skies, 
Was brighter than the sunlit skies, 
That day in Texas. 

The years, the year, that are to be 
May never more bring you to me, 
And days will come, and days will go- 
But ever when the South winds blow 
And sunshine flames across the plain, 
I'll hear your voice and live again — 
I'll hear your voice and live again 
That day in Texas. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



CANST THOU NOT HEAR ME 

I failed thee in Love's dear respect 
Too lightly held my plighted vow, 

I broke thy heart with cold neglect, 
And smiled on loves so less than thou. 
I see thee again, 
And my dream it is fair. 
I see thee as then, 
With a rose in thy hair, 
Thou art so near me 
Canst thou not hear me 
Calling thee, calling calling thee- 
Canst thou not hear my heart. 

World-weary, and too late, I find 

The world but gave a wanton's dole 

And thou alone of womankind 

Didst love me, love with thy soul . 
I see thee again, 
And my dream it is fair. 
I see thee as then 
With a rose in thy hair, 
Thou art so near me 
Canst thou not hear me 
Calling thee, calling calling thee- 
Canst thou not hear my heart. 



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The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems 



JUST THIS ONE DAY 

We drifted idly, you and I, 

The world was fair, and blue the sky 

Upon the dimpled, sunlit stream 

We saw the water-lilies gleam. 

No clasp of hands, no lovers' kiss, 

Yet never was a day like this 

One perfect day of earth and sky — 

Just this one day, and you, and I. 



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